Sweet Creek

by Lee Lynch

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not? You have a take-no-prisoners policy?”

  “It’s the insurance—the station has a take-no-passengers policy.”

  “Put me on then. I’ll run the picture machine,” Jeep said.

  The reporter, who had a little edge of toughness to her, dashed toward her car, saying, “My cam jockey’s there by now.”

  When the woman closed her door, Jeep felt suddenly like a too-tight string that had popped. Like a dumped lover. But no one had dumped her. Why was she crooning to Ms. Dynamite? Her despair must have shown. The woman hit the down button for her window.

  “I’m a quick study,” implored Jeep.

  They were face to face, the reporter’s hand on the shift, her ride running. The woman looked startled, like she’d never seen her before that moment. “I’ll bet you are,” she told Jeep, making a quick circle with her index finger.

  “Yes!” Jeep exulted, slapping the hood as she loped around the car. She was in.

  The reporter darted the little white Ford, station logo on its sides, into traffic, and back bass filled the interior.

  “Yo, it’s my woman! Deborah Harry is a goddess,” Jeep shouted over the din.

  The reporter smiled.

  “I didn’t catch your name,” Jeep fibbed.

  “Katie.”

  “I’m Jeep.”

  “What kind of name is that?”

  “It’s the kind that comes with a long story.”

  “Start talking, then, Fiddler.”

  She did, never taking her eyes from this fine-looking woman. “My family called me G.P., for Gina Pauline, but my sister Jill, she talked—well, she kind of like ran it together when she talked. G.P., Jeep—get it?”

  Lowering the CD, Katie said, “That wasn’t very long. Tell me who Jeep is.”

  Feeling like a motormouth, she went on. “I was born in Reno, just outside Reno, really, where it looks more like the railroad stop it was before all the glitter.”

  Katie wound in and around the traffic, cursing out the other drivers. She made a come-on gesture with curled fingers.

  “I was in the school orchestra, did the street-music-prodigy scene. The family was big enough that we’d play music together a lot. We’d go to the old-time music festivals in Nevada and northern California. There were these booths, bearded old guys giving lessons for the weekend, or workshops, so I started taking my violin. It was slick, learning from the old-timers. I went electric in college, way electric, and kind of fiddled my way here.”

  Katie gave her a glance. “Where do you live?”

  “You do not want to know, believe me.” Jeep described Sami and the shop. “The woman is way bizarre. I don’t know why I stay.”

  “You don’t know where you’re going, that’s why.”

  “Story of my life.” How did this stranger know?

  Katie complained, “We may never make this interview.”

  They were stuck in traffic, inching along. She’d liked the sound of that word, we. “Want me to see if there’s an accident ahead?”

  Katie shook her head no and fumbled in her bag for a cell phone, then pressed some numbers.

  “Hey, that’s so cool—you can call the traffic helicopter?” she asked when Katie hung up.

  “The station. It’s a tipped tanker. They want me there in case it’s a hazmat spill.”

  “You go, girl! Am I glad I’m riding shotgun.”

  “When we get closer I’ll need you to take the wheel so I can get an interview. They’re filming from the sky. Damn.”

  Other cars were on the shoulder at the exit. Katie came to a halt.

  “Ditch the wheels, Katie. We’ll run.”

  “And get tossed in jail for obstructing emergency vehicles? No thank you. Talk. Distract me. I’m going to try something.”

  Katie slowly honked her way toward the median.

  There were better ways to distract Katie, thought Jeep, but she was enjoying getting listened to between the horn’s insistent bleats. Sarah had known everything about her. Lara and she hadn’t talked. Sami never stopped talking.

  “So,” Jeep went on, “my dad repairs band instruments for a living. And my mom gives piano lessons. My brother plays bass; my little sisters play harmonica and mandolin. Mom sings. Dad does any wind instrument you can name, plus he fiddles too.”

  Jeep looked over at Katie. Was she listening? “I’m embarrassed, talking so much about me,” she said. When Katie didn’t answer, she thought, what the hey, and started talking again.

  “We had this, like, poster-board-size backyard and, get this, a big old ranch house—the real thing—from the 1800s, and out front we were on top of a long rolling slope. We watered the hell out of the grass, even though it wasn’t ours. Dad wanted it to look like a park. When we were little, my sister Jill and me rolled down that sucker over and over till we got dizzy. Then we’d stagger around pretending we were drunk. Summer evenings the whole family would take our music stands and go out on top of the slope—Dad built a white gazebo, like our own personal band shell—why do they call it a gazebo anyway: gay-gazebow? Anyway, we’d play Sousa and stuff. Music was the best time with my family. Learning to work on instruments with Dad was when we were closest. Sometimes the neighbors would straggle over to hear the Morgan family band, featuring Gretchen Pauline Morgan on the oldtime fiddle. Sometimes they’d barricade themselves in their houses or pick that time to mow their lawns—especially,” she laughed, “when us kids were learning to play.”

  Katie was on the median now, half on the narrow left shoulder, one set of wheels on pavement, the other not. Diesel fumes pumped into the windows from the stalled trucks. They still weren’t in sight of the spill. Jeep noticed that Katie’s nose was pierced, although she obviously didn’t wear the ring during work hours. She had been thinking of doing some piercing someplace subtle.

  Katie glanced at her, eyebrows raised.

  “Uh, I lucked out playing fiddle. Last summer? Me and Sami went to Michigan. You ever been?” Katie shook her head no. “Yeah, well it’s real retro. Like a hippie orgy or something, but you’d think those women had never seen a dyke fiddler before. Not even Martie Seidel, but you wouldn’t expect The Dixie Chicks to be at Michigan.

  “So Sami has this booth? She sells women’s music crapola: G-clef candles, double women’s symbol guitar straps, Ani DiFranco T-shirts, shit like that? And I’m giving lessons to any dyke who can operate a bow. I split covering the booth with Sami. She didn’t have a clue where I went or who I was with. Babe week. I was totally high, I mean totally, on those women.”

  She realized they’d been stopped for a while. A patrol car with flashing lights blocked the median. The cop was directing traffic into one lane. Katie called in.

  “The station got somebody else there,” she told Jeep, scanning the traffic. “My interview left for the airport. Tell me when that cop’s not looking.”

  “Now.”

  She was flung hard against the passenger door as Katie did a u-turn into oncoming traffic.

  “Aw-right!” cried Jeep.

  Katie sped up. “We might catch him before his flight.”

  “Who is this guy?”

  “I didn’t tell you? That archeologist who found the burial ground in Nevada. Is that near where you grew up?”

  “Nevada’s a big state. Everybody thinks it’s the gambling towns, but it’s like anyplace else. There are even a bunch of gay bars, but I don’t drink and I don’t smoke and I didn’t much like what or who I saw there. Why should I go hide in a dark smelly place because I’m gay? I want a gay national park. I want to change Lake Tahoe to Sweet Honey Lake. I want a gay resort!”

  Katie stomped on the brakes and triple-parked. “Drive around. I’ll be right here when I’m done.”

  Jeep humped over the stick shift and sat checking out the spiff dash that did everything but spit ice cubes. She got Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” booming and slid around a huge tourist bus disgorging a lot
of deeply tanned middle-agers in trendy outdoor gear.

  She hadn’t had a car of her own since her Chevy Spirit died in the parking lot about three weeks before she left for the Bay Area. She should at least have had it towed to the junkyard when she left Sarah. Had it been late-blooming hormones driving her? She felt caught up in a dyke indie flick. Glamorous career girl with pierced nostril meets girl from the boonies with available heart. If she and Katie hit it off she’d hang around—that she knew without knowing Katie. Katie and Jeep. She liked it.

  Katie drove them back into town in the early twilight. The fruit tree blossoms were ice cream colors, and front yards streamed with flowering bushes. Katie had taken off her sunglasses. She was sleek. Dark hair, dark eyes, skin a shade those eagle freaks from the tour bus just spent thousands to get during a two-week vacation.

  “Where do you want me to drop you, Jeep Morgan?” Katie asked.

  “Wherever you’re headed is fine. I’ll get home from there.”

  “Is this a trick to find out where I live?”

  “You think I’m that crass? I can use a phone book.”

  “What made you so sure I’m gay?”

  “My gaydar went off.”

  “Like you have one of those gadgets in your pocket.”

  “No, a chip implanted in my hypothalamus,” Jeep joked, but realized her hands had heated up. Something was going on here.

  Katie let go and really laughed for the first time. “Thanks for taking over the car and not getting into a twenty-vehicle pileup or wandering onto a runway. I would have missed the archeologist if I’d had to park.”

  “Thanks for trusting me with it.”

  Katie looked long at her, until the traffic light turned green. “That’s so weird. It never occurred to me not to.”

  “I don’t suppose you want to rescue me from Sami.”

  “I don’t think my girlfriend would like that.”

  “Girlfriend?” Her voice sounded pathetic. She cleared her throat. “I should have known you’d be taken.”

  On Dolores Street Katie used a remote to open a garage door under a pink stucco building. There was a red Honda in one of the two spaces.

  “Where are we?”

  “My place. You can come up for a while. Tanya’s a software guru and thinks it’s more important to get her company to IPO status than to keep me happy.”

  “Woo-hoo!”

  Katie’s Honda had been small, but that didn’t matter. When they packed it a month later, Jeep hadn’t had much more to put in it than when she’d left Reno with Sami.

  Hector White’s car was a little different from Katie’s. He and Clara mostly used the big old pickup, but they also had their Sunday car, a 1978 white Plymouth Fury Hector kept under a tarp and polished regularly. They used it to go to the garage sales because, Clara said, “We’ve got a regular family again.”

  After the garage sale, after they’d managed to fit the drums in the trunk, they drove across town where Hector pulled into a parking space outside Waterfall Convalescent Center to make their weekly visit to Clara’s older brother, Jack. Luke darted from the open door to look for drumsticks under the plum trees. The ground was covered with a confetti of white plum blossoms.

  “It’s kind of criminal,” Jeep told them, “that there’s no place in town a little dude can buy a set of drumsticks. If I ever get the chance to play store again, I’m going to carry them. And used computers. I know enough to do basic troubleshooting, and I’d keep one for myself.” She’d need an eBay name—garage sale dude would do it. No, garagesaledandy.com.

  “They need to be smooth, Luke, or you’ll break the skins,” Jeep advised as he waved knobby pine twigs at her.

  When they entered the building, Hector gave out big orange daylilies from Clara’s back garden. Patients, staff, visitors, he didn’t care. Hector offered them to whomever caught his eye until he ran out.

  “Hello there, sunshine!” an old woman in a wheelchair called to Luke, waving her daylily.

  Jeep took Luke into Lillian Levine’s room. If the hallways smelled like canned soup, this room was soaked in some astringent deodorizer. Lillian introduced her dolls to every visitor who stopped by, and she always had a lollipop for Luke. These were people who could use more music in their lives, but she couldn’t see going to school for two years when she could come over here once a week to play and have a sing-along. These folks would dig on old-time music. She put her hands to either side of her face to cool them against her cheeks. She hated making decisions.

  At Room 314, Clara greeted her brother Jack by shoving a paper bag at him. Jack looked furtively around, then slipped it under his pillow.

  His roommate Jethro wheeled over. “I’m going to steal that goody while you’re in the john, Jack-ass,” he threatened, winking at Luke. “Me and Luke here are going to eat every last crumb.”

  Jack raised his arms defensively, but Jethro wheeled away, laughing. “If I could collect all the marbles your brother’s lost, Clara, I’d sell them at my shop.”

  Clara, silent as her brother, handed the other bag she carried to Jethro.

  He brought his caterpillar-like eyebrows together. “Clara, you ought to open up your own bakery. Cinnamon and sugar—this smells like heaven. Nobody cooks like you anymore.”

  “Thank the Lord,” Hector said.

  Clara shot him a glance, but he was watching Jethro cut up the coffee cake. Luke got the first piece.

  Jeep let the buttery crumbles dissolve in her mouth, dreaming she’d devote a counter at Garage Sale Dandy to Clara’s baking. No, that would compete with Donny’s baking. Except Donny didn’t use sugar or white flour. Maybe Garage Sale Dandy could sell the unhealthy stuff.

  Jack held out his hand. Jethro cut him a big piece. They watched Jack wrap it in a handkerchief and put it in a dresser drawer. He left the room.

  “I don’t know why you still visit this nutty brother of yours,” Hector said, wiping his hands on his baggy jeans.

  “I’m all he’s got in the world.” Clara gave the same answer every week.

  Hector replied, as usual, “Because he’s driven everyone else away.”

  “Give us a few years and you’ll be exactly like him,” Clara sniped back.

  Jeep felt a chill in her hands. That was a sucky thought. She was needing these people too much to lose them.

  “Here’s a good one for you, Jethro. How can you make a coat last?” Jethro tapped a foot and looked toward the ceiling, pretending to ignore him until Hector gave in and announced, “Make the trousers and vest first!”

  “I don’t know who’s nuttier, Clara, your brother or the man you married. Did I tell you my brother was up here Tuesday,” Jethro said. “The fella he hired to manage the shop took off with a day’s receipts. John’s ready to sell the place out from under me. That’s two managers since I came in here. I’ve got a second operation scheduled now that my weight’s down, but he won’t even advertise for someone else to run the place.”

  “You’re looking to fill a job?” Jeep asked. She held her breath. Luke drummed on her thigh with his little sticks.

  “Why? You know somebody?”

  She looked at Clara, then at Hector. Luke went still and grabbed her waist, burying his face in her sweatshirt.

  “What’s it take?”

  “It’s not hard. He’d have to be honest, add and subtract, dicker for good prices, buy what would sell.” Jethro laughed. “Why? You think you can persuade Hector to drop his fishing rod long enough to do a lick of work?”

  “And if nominated I will decline!” Hector said with enthusiasm. “It’s our Jeep who’s looking for work.”

  Luke held tighter, shaking his head against her. She stroked his silky light hair. “It’s okay, dude. It’s okay. We’d still be together.”

  “Work? I thought you were a fiddler.”

  “Big whoop. There’s no cash in fiddling. I’ll run your store for you, Jethro. What do you sell?”

  “Whatever I can get.”
>
  “He’s a junk dealer in town, Jeep.”

  She kept herself as still as she would if she spotted some huge bargain at a garage sale. “A used store?”

  “Well used, my dear. I started it when I retired from the navy, twenty-three years ago. I had all this treasure I picked up in my travels and no wife or family who wanted any of it. So I rented that little place next to the pharmacy, Jethro’s Jumble?”

  “I can’t picture it.”

  “Locals don’t go there,” Clara said, “but the casino tourists like useless junk with steep prices. Little china dogs and ratty fur jackets.”

  Jethro defended himself. “These Californians are getting a deal.”

  “These Californians wouldn’t know a deal if it walked up to them and punched them in the nose,” Hector said. He turned to Jeep. “You think you could stand waiting on them?”

  “You said I’d be good at it.”

  “She’s learning. We take her and the boy to the sales with us.”

  Was this something Clara and Hector dreamed up? Was this why they brought her and Luke to see Jack every week, so she’d meet Jethro? “Jethro,” she asked, stroking Luke’s hair faster, “do you sell musical instruments?”

  “I don’t go out looking for them, but I have a little of this, a little of that. And old 78 RPM records—Les Brown and His Band of Renown? Count Basie? Clara, do you remember ‘One O’Clock Jump’?” He wheeled his chair jerkily back and forth in a little dance.

  Clara gave Jeep a push toward him.

  “I’ve managed stores—a gift shop and a music shop. And I can repair musical instruments,” Jeep said, dodging the wheels of the chair. “I can add and subtract and dicker and spot a bargain. Would the manager get to go out and buy stuff?”

  Jethro wiped his hands on his robe. “I used to hit all the garage sales I could before I opened the shop. And people knew to bring me good items, not the leftovers.” He paused and studied her. “I couldn’t pay much.”

  “Can you go over minimum? I’ve got Luke to take care of now.”

  Clara leaned down to Jethro’s face. “You can afford to pay her good, Moneybags. She hasn’t got two thin dimes to rub together. Do you want the boy to wear rags?”