Bye, Bye, Love

by Virginia Swift

  “Any idea who did the mount?” Sally asked.

  “Couldn’t say, but it must have been a long time ago, since I can’t remember a time the moose wasn’t glowering down at us as we opened our Christmas presents. I assume some taxidermist in Cheyenne did the work. It was actually really generous of my dad to give him to us. I mean, do you have any idea what it would cost to buy something like that?”

  “Tell me,” said Sally.

  “I checked it out on eBay. They’ve got moose heads up for bid at everywhere from five hundred dollars for some moth-eaten relic to twenty-five hundred bucks for a prime specimen.”

  “I guess it’s a niche market,” said Sally.

  “Yeah, but you’d be surprised. We’ve had customers come in here and offer us a grand right off the bat. One old guy came in with this little blonde, ordered four vodka martinis, a hundred-dollar bottle of wine and a couple of bloody steaks, and decided he wasn’t leaving without the moose. Wanted to give us an absurd amount of money. I was almost tempted to take it, but, after all, Moostapha’s family,” Burt told her.

  “Who’s family?” asked Randy Whitebird, striding up to the table.

  Ever the gracious host, Burt refrained from telling him it was none of his damned business, as Sally would have been inclined to do. “That there moose,” he said, pointing to the wall.

  Whitebird sniffed and stood up straighter, thought a moment. “You’re right,” he said, “All living creatures are family. And, of course, that particular family member would probably be a lot happier roaming free in the forest,” he pointed out.

  Something flickered in Burt’s eyes, but again he showed restraint, pulled out a chair for the self-appointed champion of fez-wearing moose heads, and set menus in front of them.

  Whitebird scanned the menu. “You do have something for vegetarians besides”—he looked again— “grilled cheese?” he asked.

  “Today at lunch we’re doing a blue corn crepe with black beans and roasted peppers,” Burt replied. “But if you’re not vegan, don’t rule out the grilled cheese. It’s an assortment of three mini-sandwiches—cheddar and apples on dark pumpernickel, brie and tomatoes on sourdough, and jarlsberg and mushrooms on swirl rye. Comes with our confetti slaw or a side salad. We don’t get many complaints,” he finished, unable to repress a small sniff of his own.

  Sally ordered the tortilla soup. Whitebird went for the grilled cheese. “I’m a big guy,” he told Sally. “I have to work at getting enough protein.”

  You had to give him credit for not being a purist. And he was indeed big, and not a trial on the eyes, if you liked the type. For her part, she had a hard time getting beyond the beads (and they weren’t, as Sally had originally thought, on a leather thong, but were instead strung on a piece of nylon cord. No animal products visible). Still, she could see the appeal of him, barrel-chested, long-legged, with lots of wavy salt-and-pepper hair and crinkly blue eyes. He used the eyes on her now, radiating warmth, and a voice that ran to gravelly. “I’m glad we could get together. And glad you’re doing this book. Nina was fond of you.”

  Sally engaged her bullshit detector. “Thanks. I liked her, too, though I’d only known her a short time. How long did you work with her?”

  “Just six months. But we’d met a year before that, in Hawaii. We were guests at the home of a mutual friend. Felt like fate to me,” he said, his eyes misting slightly.

  “Fate? Why?”

  A waiter in a white shirt, jeans, boots, and bolo tie brought the beverages: coffee for Sally, a cup of hot water for White-bird. “Because we’d both made hard journeys to the same place. Nina and I came from the same generation. We were both Western kids—I grew up in San Antonio, and she was from New Mexico. We were both idealists in our way.

  “I was raised to be a patriot, man,” he explained. “I did a pretty good job for a long time. Spent six years in the army Rangers, givin’ it up for my country.”

  “Were you in Vietnam?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, looking away. “And other places. It’s not something I talk about a lot,” he finished vaguely.

  “A lot of guys came home not wanting to talk about it at all,” Sally prompted.

  “A lot of guys got pretty fucked up,” he responded. “Me, too, for a while. But then I realized it wasn’t me. It was the country. Got home in 1970, just in time for Cambodia, which was no surprise to me, I can tell you, and Kent State and Jackson State, which were. Couldn’t believe the government would shoot at our own citizens, until I got a bayonet in the belly at a campus protest. Decided right then and there, as I was bandaging up my gut, that I’d take all the nasty, nasty things Uncle Sugar taught me and use ’em on behalf of The People.”

  “Which people?” Sally asked.

  “The,” Whitebird answered. “You know. The oppressed masses. Back in the early seventies, they were everywhere. In the South. On the Indian reservations. In the beat-up factory towns. Fight the underground guerrilla war that would liberate ’em all,” he said, taking a sip of hot water.

  “Where’d you do this?” Sally asked.

  “Here and there,” he said, keeping it vague. “You’d be surprised how many of us there were. People who knew how to do everything from blowing up an office complex the size of Fort Union, to poisoning the water supply of an averagesize city. Guys with Ph.D.s in chemistry and physics and molecular biology, looking to smash the state. Girls who wanted to learn how to stick a knife in somebody and walk away before the target started bleeding to death. I watched the network grow. The more paranoid the government got about the underground, the more people they drove into it. And we had some decent financial backing from rich radicals,” he said.

  “Like Nina Cruz,” Sally said.

  “Mentioning no names,” Whitebird said. “But I can say we listened to a lot of her music.”

  It occurred to Sally that neither Whitebird nor Kali had been in evidence the day she’d been out to Shady Grove to start her research. Cat had made good on her plan to evict the last of the Dub-Dubs. “I didn’t see you out at Shady Grove. I take it you’ve found someplace to stay in town,” she said.

  “No choice. Cat said go, so I went. Didn’t feel like crashing in the office with the others, so I just rented a studio apartment for the month. It’s not so bad. It was pretty painful being out there without Nina. Not to mention all the cops stomping around,” he said.

  “Did you ever do anything back in the day that put the government on your trail?” she asked.

  “No idea, man,” he said, looking down as he fingered his beads, then looking up. “Never did anything that got me caught.” He grinned.

  Sally smiled back, wondering if she was starting to be charmed by him. For now, they both appeared to be playing along. “And eventually you surfaced back into the straight world,” she said.

  Now, Whitebird laughed. “Oh yeah. You could say that. I’d made some great contacts in the movement. First job I got was in a Wall Street brokerage firm. I turned out to be okay at the financial stuff, but better at public relations.”

  “Wow!” said Sally. “From the Symbionese Liberation Army to flacking for the establishment. Pretty rad transformation.”

  “Not really,” Whitebird answered. “Think of Jerry Rubin. I’d figured out that we couldn’t beat ’em, so I joined ’em. It was a matter of having a long-term plan. By the time I started working on Wall Street, I’d had enough of what we used to call creative violence. I figured I could build up a rep in the PR business, and then use my powers for good.”

  Sally reminded herself that the guy had been an Airborne Ranger. Those guys learned how to jump out of planes when there didn’t look to be any place to land, to survive in the jungle on lichens and leeches, to kill with their bare hands. Some of them, she imagined, had ended up as mercenaries or worse. Randy Whitebird had been a dangerous man, and might still be. “And that’s what you’re doing now?” she asked.

  “Like I said, I’d had enough of creative violence. Th
at’s why I changed my name to ‘Whitebird,’ ” he said. Another grin. “From Weissberg.”

  Probably not many Jews in the Rangers. And now, one more Anglicized brother for the melting pot. Sally had to grin herself, but then she got serious. “There sure was a lot of crap in the left, back in the late sixties and early seventies, about how great violence was. That, as much as the government repression, probably killed the movement,” she observed.

  “Yeah. And like everybody I met when I was under, I bought it for a while. But anybody who got woken up in the sixties, like I did, and managed to live as long as I have, has to travel the long and winding road. Mine’s led to environmental advocacy, with an emphasis on animal rights. Over the years, I’ve worked my way up in corporate PR, but I’ve always done pro bono stuff for causes I support. I’ve just been waiting for the chance to cash in my stake, and use my skills and experience for things I really care about.”

  The waiter brought their lunches. Whitebird looked his sandwich platter over, then smiled at the waiter and said, “This looks great. Thank the maître d’ for the suggestion.”

  Suddenly, he looked like a man accustomed to eating in nice places, the suit he’d once been, rather than the aging hipster he’d played so far. A chameleon, this one.

  Impossibly fragrant steam rose from Sally’s bowl. She took a spoonful of soup and almost moaned. She was pretty sure that in all her years of bumping around the West, she’d never encountered a tortilla soup to stand up to John-Boy’s. They ought to put it in cartons and franchise it out. That’d ruin it for sure.

  But back to business, she thought, noting that Whitebird seemed to be making pretty quick work of his grilled cheese deluxe. “Why animal rights?” she asked him.

  “Why not?” he answered. “You’re a feminist, right?”

  “Yes,” she answered warily, pretty sure where this argument was going to go.

  “Feminism,” he said, gobbling the last bite of the brie and tomato sandwich, “is one form of animal rights. We’ve just broadened the agenda to apply to all sentient beings. Where would you draw the line anyway, Sally?”

  There were feminists who’d agree that women and animals ought to have the same rights. Nina Cruz had been such a one, but Sally wasn’t with them. She figured that when it came, say, to the right to vote, or hold property, the line was pretty damned easy to draw. She shrugged and opted for Whitebird’s protective vagueness. “Reasonable people might differ.”

  “And so they do,” he said, opting for a diplomatic answer of his own. “So it’s pretty amazing when you meet somebody whose ideas and passions match your own perfectly. That’s where fate came walking onto the lanai at my friend’s place on Maui, in the person of Nina Cruz. I’d never met anybody I clicked with so totally at first sight.”

  “Emotionally as well as politically,” Sally said.

  He nodded sadly. “Yeah. Man. Whew,” he took the napkin out of his lap and dabbed at his eyes.

  The man was clearly grieving, and his sorrow touched Sally’s heart. She’d encountered Randy Whitebird exactly twice before, once on the horrible day of the tragedy, and again at the benefit-planning lunch. He’d been distracted, freaked out, self-protective at Shady Grove, and she began to understand the strength with which he’d felt about Nina. Give him the benefit of the doubt—he’d gone running out into the snow to try to help her.

  Yet so far, she’d approached Randy Whitebird as somebody who deserved her disdain at least, her animosity at worst. And she knew why. Before she’d met Whitebird, the only report she’d had on him was from Stone Jackson, a far-from-objective source, but a person whom Sally was perhaps too inclined to please. Was it prudent to take an ex-husband’s word about his ex-wife’s latest lover? “So you and Nina fell in love, and you followed her to Wyoming, to work with her in setting up the Wild West.”

  “I’d have followed her to Antarctica,” he said. “But it took a while. I was living in San Francisco at the time. Had a few things to wrap up before I could get here. That turned out to be a bummer in a lot of ways.”

  “How so?” Sally asked.

  “Put it this way,” said Whitebird. “Nina was the most compassionate creature on the planet, and that could be a problem. People just flocked to her, and some of them couldn’t figure out when it was time to split. She had a really tough time breaking off things that were over.”

  Except, of course, in the case of Thomas Jackson. Or then again, maybe not. “So by the time you got to Shady Grove, some of her hangers-on were still hanging around,” Sally said.

  Whitebird gave a short laugh. “Oh yeah. I mean, yeah. Some of ’em were pretty cool, of course, like Nels Willen and Stone Jackson. But jeez, others. You met Kali.”

  “Nina’s right-hand woman,” said Sally.

  Whitebird considered his response. “Yeah. They’d done a lot of work together. And don’t get me wrong, I know they were involved for a long time. But that was one scene that was played out, way before Nina and I ever met. Kali just wouldn’t let go, and Nina couldn’t figure out how to cut her loose. I had to take matters into my own hands, man. The night I got here, Kali’s stuff was still in Nina’s bedroom. I just packed it up and moved it out, and that was that. Nina was grateful, but she couldn’t manage to kiss her off entirely. She said she’d talked it over with Kali, and that Kali accepted that their personal thing was over, but she wanted to stay on and at least get Wild West off the ground. Nina agreed.”

  “That put you in an awkward position,” Sally observed.

  “I didn’t dig it, but what could I do? It was what she wanted, and I wasn’t about to get all caveman about her being my woman now, et cetera, et cetera. So I said I’d do what I could to work with Kali.”

  “Tough,” Sally sympathized.

  “No shit, Baba Ji,” said Whitebird. “The woman kept pushing the boundaries. I like to get up real early, do a little meditation, a little yoga, make a few phone calls, get a head start on the day. Nina liked to sleep a little later. In fact, some days, especially after she’d had one of her ‘spells,’ she’d stay in bed half the morning.”

  “Spells?” Sally asked.

  “Yes. Of course, at the time nobody would have dreamed she had mad cow disease, but she clearly had something wrong with her. Headaches, forgetfulness, fatigue, mood swings, all that kind of thing. But she also had moments of complete confusion, and sometimes that led to ugly outbursts she couldn’t remember later. I was worried she might have a brain tumor. I tried to take care of her. Of course, so did a lot of other people.

  “Kali just plain hated to let Nina out of her sight. And mornings were the worst. Can’t tell you how many times I went upstairs to see if she was awake, and found Kali sitting on our bed—our bed!—or coming out of the room after some cozy little chat. Nina didn’t have the guts to make her stop.”

  Sally could guess what came next. “So it was up to you to step in,” she said.

  He nodded. “Once Nina started talking about the benefit, I decided that gave me a timetable. Kali handled the books for Wild West, and I figured I’d take a couple of months to familiarize myself with that stuff. We’d get through the benefit, then I’d tell Kali to take a walk. I’d make Nina go to a neurologist, find out what was wrong, get it taken care of. Then we could get on with our lives.”

  He looked down, swallowed hard. “Losing Nina is just about the toughest thing I’ve ever had to deal with. Part of me went with her. I doubt I’ll be staying on with Wild West after the benefit. My chemistry with Cat sucks, to be honest. But it’s also that I’ve figured out that this isn’t my spiritual home. Wyoming doesn’t call to me the way it did to Nina. So for now, I’m focusing on this Thanksgiving event, as a way of connecting with her. Carrying on that little piece of the dream is about all I can do.”

  Sally listened for the false note but couldn’t hear it. She wasn’t sure this luxury Laramie lunch was buying her much in the way of stuff she’d need for the book. The way Nina’s life seemed to have been,
a lover like Randy Whitebird, no matter how infatuated, might not merit more than a paragraph. Still, he’d given her some decent sixties background information, a little more insight into Nina’s eclectic politics. “And what was the dream?” Sally asked.

  “Like I’ve been telling you, man,” said Whitebird. “We shared the dream. Of a world where the rights of all living creatures are respected, where wild animals can be free, and domestic animals are treasured, not exploited. Wyoming’s a place where everything from cows and sheep to ducks and deer and elk are born being set up for the slaughter. It’s also a gigantic empty place where a few people can make a big difference in the lives of a whole lot of our fellow beings. It’s time,” he said, a note of zeal creeping into his voice, “to stop the madness, and end the violence.”

  Chapter 20

  The Grapevine

  When the check came, Whitebird said he was sorry, but he’d have to run. Had phone calls to make, e-mails to answer. “My job hasn’t gotten any easier, with all this,” he explained. “As you heard, Cat wanted all the financial and legal stuff, and I had every intention of giving her everything. But Kali and she have issues with each other, and that means that every time I ask Kali for anything, she’s got some objection or problem or question. As if it weren’t bad enough to have those two yankin’ my chain in different directions, the cops screwed up our computers, poking around. Quartz has been working on it for two days, so I’m hoping he’ll have it straightened out by this afternoon, the Goddess willing.”

  Sally told Whitebird not to worry, that lunch was on her, and she’d see him around. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help with the benefit,” she said.

  “Actually, there is. As you’ll recall, a portion of the proceeds will go to the widow of that hunter who was shot.”