Gibbon's Decline and Fall

by Sheri S. Tepper

“Do you know about birth control?”

  “Know it’s a rich people’s thing. They tryin’ a wipe us out.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “People. They come around, they say birth control’s tryin’ a wipe us out.”

  “Who’s ‘us,’ Lolly? Who do you mean?”

  “Us. Us black people.”

  “But you’re not black. You’re white—like we say here, Anglo.”

  Lolly looked confused. “The people that come aroun’, they was black.”

  “The ones who told you not to use birth control.”

  “They was black. They tol’ me birth control is genocide.” She said the word almost proudly. “Genocide. They tryin’ wipe us out, an’ we got to follow the Leader an’ keep our women pure an’ populate the world.”

  “They were Black Muslims?”

  “They said they was Army of God people. Because it’s a new thousan’ years, time for us holy people to rise up.”

  The hair rose on the back of Carolyn’s neck. She swallowed painfully. “But if you’re not black …”

  “Us poor people gonna rise up, too. They got no right to keep us from havin’ babies. They owe us, they gotta feed us an’ all the babies, an’ the more babies we got, the stronger we get.”

  “But you didn’t want to have a baby.”

  “I didn’ have the stuff.…”

  Carolyn sighed, sat back. “Just for a minute, Lolly, think about it. If people are sick, we try to get rid of the sickness. If people are poor, we try to get rid of the poverty. Is that bad?”

  “Gettin’ ridda me, that’s bad.”

  “Not getting rid of you. Stopping you from being poor.”

  “How you gonna do that ’less you get ridda me?”

  Good question. How could one ever stop Lolly from being poor? Carolyn tried to find an answer as she put her papers away, coming up with nothing at all. “I brought you some candy. It’s all right. I showed it to the guard outside. You can take it.”

  She did take it, a quick snatch, like an animal, afraid some other animal would get it first. She did not say thank you. On her way out Carolyn stopped across the hall, at the double doors leading into the tank room. Halfway down the aisle between the racks a slender Hispanic woman knelt in prayer, one hand resting on the tank just above her, the other, wound in a rosary, striking at her breast, once, twice, three times. She looked familiar. Carolyn stared, surprised to recognize a former housekeeper, Emilia Gonzales.

  “Emilia?” She opened the door and slipped into the vast room. “Emilia?”

  The head turned, the blind eyes gradually became aware. “Ms. Shepherd? Carolyn?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Teofilo. He’s here.” She gestured.

  Carolyn joined her beside the tank. Inside the glass the handsome face slept, serenely unaware. She remembered an olive-skinned boy with eyes like stars and a beautiful smile, playing with the dogs in the driveway while his mother did the cleaning. Emilia had worked for Hal and Carolyn for almost five years and was one of the few people who ever called her Ms. Shepherd.

  “Your boy? He was just a baby last time I saw him.”

  “He grew up,” Emilia said.

  The clock marked the years until end of sentence. Twenty-nine years, ten months, eleven days. Illegal firearm sales. Assault on a police officer. Flight to avoid prosecution.

  “I will be old when he gets out. Too old.” Tears leaked from her eyes, finding accustomed runnels down cheeks long eroded by tears.

  “Emilia, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “I went to your office. They said you retired.”

  “They should have called me at home.”

  “I looked. Your name isn’t in the book.”

  As it wasn’t. Damn it, Jerry should have called. He knew how close she’d always felt to Emilia!

  “Was there an appeal, Emilia?”

  “The lawyer, he said it wouldn’t work.”

  “What happened?”

  “He find this gun when we cleaning out my brother’s house, after my brother die. It belong to my brother, Geraldo, so Teo took it to sell it to a man. The man was a policeman, he grab Teo, Teo got scared, he push him and run away.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. Who was your lawyer?”

  “His name is Harmston. He didn’t do nothing for us. Teo’s brothers, they want to do something, you know, something crazy. Get him out somehow. I say no, no, is enough we got one boy lost.”

  Carolyn hugged her, patted her. Damn. This boy didn’t belong here! Harmston. That lazy, stupid bastard.

  “Emilia, I’ve got a case right now, but I swear, as soon as I’m through, I’ll do something about this. I promise!”

  “God bless you if you do, oh, yes.” Released, Emilia knelt once more, her hand going to her breast as before. She was visiting this tank as she would a grave. For all intents and purposes, her son Teo was dead.

  Josh was watching from the end of the aisle nearest the door, shaking his head sadly.

  “She’s got a kid in there.”

  “Yes,” Carolyn said. “I know him. He doesn’t belong in here, Josh.”

  “I know him and his brothers. Nice kid. He don’t belong in there, that’s for sure. Come over here.” He led the way down a side aisle. “Look there.”

  He pointed out three tanks, all together. Behind the faceplates children’s faces looked out at her—beardless, slender, not more than thirteen or fourteen years old. Cisneros, Diego, Ravenna. For a moment she was astray, in a dream. She had been here before, seen this before.…

  “Kids,” said Josh. “Babies. I know for a fact these three guys wasn’t the ones who robbed that store, but old God Almighty Rombauer, he likes somebody in the tank, never mind is it the right one. Some days I get to thinkin’, if I knew for sure which was which, I could empty out a lot of those tanks and pop me somebody in that belongs here. Not like it used to be, guards and gates and all. Only live people we’ve got here are the ones waiting trial. Nobody’d ever know.”

  “You could do that?” She stared at him, intrigued by the idea. “Just untank somebody?”

  He put on a conspiratorial face, whispering, “Not hard. I’ve seen ’em do it. You just poke a few buttons, wait awhile, help the guy out, then you sterilize the case and set the buttons for the next one. The stuff you shoot ’em with before you put ’em in the tank, it’s right there in the storeroom. There’s nothing to it.”

  “Poor Teo. You’re right about there being some bad people, Josh. And there’s some that aren’t bad who get called bad.”

  “You tellin’ me? Lots of people in here don’t belong here. These three kids? They’re here because Rombauer didn’t want them where they could talk about what happened to ’em in judge’s chambers. You know what I mean.”

  Her jaw dropped. She, like everyone else who frequented the courthouse, had heard rumors. “Rombauer … he abused them?”

  “He told ’em to come to a little party in his office and he’d shorten their sentences.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Cisneros’s sister. She comes to see ’em every week or so. Her brother told her, she told me. Course, we all know about old Bugger-Boy Rombauer. He’s been that way forever.”

  “Oh, I wish I could prove that.”

  “Jagger can prove it, that’s why his cases go so good. This guy of his, Dale Martin, ex-cop, ex–Green Beret, ex-a lot of things. Does a little spyin’, you know. Maybe breaks a arm here or there. He drinks too much sometimes, talks a little too much. He says the DA planted a camera and got some pictures.”

  “Martin,” she mused. “And he works for Jagger?”

  “Now, that’s a guy belongs in here. I oughta switch ’em.”

  “Somebody would find out,” she said musingly.

  “Nah. You put somebody else in the tank, but you set the buttons like it was for the first guy, set the humidity control a little high so the faceplate fogs up. Then they’d never kno
w.”

  “Until the sentence ran out,” she laughed without humor.

  “I s’pose.” He grinned widely, amused at the thought, then walked with her toward the barred door, jingling his keys. “Except the way they change sentences around, they might not even know then!”

  “You mean sentences get changed once they’re in here?”

  “Oh, sure. You got a guy doing ten in New Mexico, you get papers from Montana saying he’s supposed to be doing fifteen up there, you just punch in fifteen more and send Montana a FUD form—that’s a federal uniform depository form. End of the year you got more out-of-state guys in your tank than you have in-state guys being tanked somewhere else, you get paid for the difference. Why bother shipping the pods around? Hell, all that room we got down at WIPP, might as well make some money on it.”

  Outside, the dust devils still chased one another across the desert, much ado about little. The April sun still shone, but the light seemed gray, like February seen through a dirty window. The drive home seemed endless and purposeless, except that Hal was waiting. When she drove in, smoke from the barbecue grill drifted toward her through the budding trees. So he was up and about.

  “Where you been? I was getting worried about you!” He put down his cane to pull her into a great two-armed hug, like a hungry bear. She melted against him and they stood there, solidly planted, not wanting to break apart.

  He did, however, pushing her out at arm’s length. “You got a call.”

  “Who?”

  “Helen. She said to tell you she heard Jake talking on the phone. She said Jake must be prosecuting a case against a client of yours, because he mentioned your name. She says she’s afraid he’s up to his old tricks.”

  “Did she know who he was talking to?”

  “Some guy named Martin. He works for Jagger. She’s going to call you in the morning, she says.”

  “Second time I’ve heard that name in the last hour or so.” She told him what Josh had said. “Helen didn’t say anything else?”

  “That was all. Just the sound of the click and the buzz of the line. She was in a hurry, whispering.”

  Carolyn clenched her fists, her jaw, felt every muscle tense. Well, of course Jagger was up to his old tricks! Witnesses would lie, evidence would be created out of whole cloth. He’d arrange it all!

  “Do it,” she snarled into the air. “Do it, Jagger. I’m not going to get trapped in a cell so somebody can fake my suicide. If anybody dies this time, it’s going to be you.”

  “Hey, sweetheart.” Hal pulled her into his arms once again, half laughing, tears at the corners of his eyes. “Hey, there, love. It’s me! Remember me?”

  She laughed at herself helplessly, without humor. Lord. She was like that ewe-sheep. Stamping her foot and glaring when she hadn’t a fang in her mouth or a horn on her head. All this threat and fury when chances were neither she nor Hal could do a damn thing about it. Unless they got some help from somewhere.

  Night in Nuevo Los Angeles, and the bag ladies are at it again. “Listen!” is the command they’re painting along the concrete bottom and sides of the Los Angeles River. There, in scarlet spray paint highlighted in yellow, each letter fifteen feet high, the message is written: “Listen!” “Pay Attention.” “Think.”

  Night in Denver and the Family Values Shock Troops are at it again, working the mall outside the movie house, rushing out at groups of girls, lashing at their legs with whips while the girls scream and scatter like chickens threatened by a fox. “Go home,” the men bellow. “Go home where you belong!”

  “I belong here just as much as you do!” one tall girl shouts back. “This is a free country!”

  “For men it is,” comes the response from three or four, moving in on her, trapping her. “For men it is.”

  When the other girls have gone and the men have dispersed, the argumentative one is still there, prone, blood from her head skeining the tiles. Though the whips had not looked that dangerous, the handles had been weighted with lead. The witnesses creep out, by ones and twos, to pick up the fallen one and carry her away. Later they will call for an ambulance, but they will not go to the police. This isn’t the first time, and they have already learned not to go to the police.

  Night in Chicago, New Orleans, Charlestown, Detroit. Night in Omaha, Cheyenne, Missoula, Seattle. Everywhere groups of old ladies here and there, doing incomprehensible things and moving on: groups of men doing equally incomprehensible things, which often leave the wounded or dead scattered behind them.

  “Count the dead,” the bag ladies paint on the sides of buildings, on the sidewalks, down the streets. “Lemmings or men, death is the answer.”

  “Go home,” shout the men, brandishing their whips. “Go home to your father or husband, where you belong.”

  Night in Pakistan. Night in Bangladesh. Night in Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, Sicily. Night in London, Rome, Barcelona.

  Snag-toothed hags, wrinkled dames, draggle-hemmed women moving down alleys, painting words in a hundred languages. “Girl babies are buried beneath the mango tree. Their blood is in the mangoes.” “Ashes of brides blow on the wind. Do you dare inhale?” “For every man who goes hungry, five women starve. Their blood is in your rice.” “Watch out for women ghosts; they are all around you.”

  Stout men, strong men, red-faced and round-bellied; lean men, wiry men, olive-skinned and flat-stomached, whaling away with their whips at any female found on the streets, turning weighted handles on the few who don’t take the hint.

  So far the two groups have not encountered one another face-to-face. Like antiphonal choruses in a Greek drama, they speak at one another across the waiting stage of the world, readying for the drama to come.

  ON FRIDAY, AFTER STOPPING FOR a few groceries, Jessamine turned into her driveway and hit the code pattern on the security pad, hoping to find the garage empty and Patrick gone. He often went drinking with the half a dozen other expatriates who were his closest friends, sharing gloom and enmity among themselves and getting it out of their systems. No such luck. His car was in the garage.

  In the kitchen half-melted ice filled a bowl beside the sink; a bottle of Scotch stood half-empty beside a cutting board that held a knife and shreds of lemon peel.

  “Hi,” she called in a carefully neutral voice. “I’m home.”

  “And how’s the little working wife?” he asked from the door. The glass held at his mouth was almost empty. He’d been lying down; his sandy hair stuck out in all directions. “Here she is to break my tedium. Maybe she can fix the TV, it’s on the blink.”

  “It was fine this morning. I watched the news.”

  “The movie channels are all messed up. I can’t tell a boob from a bottom.”

  “Tragic for you.”

  “Boring. So. Amuse me. What exciting tales of the office and labs does she have to relate?”

  “Not much, Pat. Sorry. One dull meeting, otherwise same old cross-match project.”

  “Ah, yes. Same old, same old. Same old Jessy. Same old Pat. Aren’t you a little tired of that?” The rhyme came out unintended, surprising him, and he giggled, the sound that identified an intermediate stage of drunkenness. Past the early cozy, sexy stage, but not yet nasty. Into that little-boy stage, ain’t we devils, hyuck, hyuck. If he went on, he’d get nasty, then weepy, then he’d be sick, and finally he’d fall asleep. Jessamine had it down to a mantra: sexy, funny, nasty—weepy, sicky, out.

  She dropped into a kitchen chair. “Well, Pat, I’m not tired to the point of desperation yet. Are you?”

  “Yeah,” he said, dropping all pretense, setting the glass on the table, pulling out a chair for himself, spearing her with a jabbed index finger, all at once blearily businesslike. “I’m tired of it, Jess. I want something for me. I want you to go back to California with me. I want you to have a baby for me. I want a son.”

  She took one long, shuddering breath, then another. Well, well, well. So he’d been waiting for her, getting his demands all marshaled.

/>   “I’ve thought about it,” she said, forcing herself to be calmly reasonable. “And I don’t want to be part of the senescent fertility movement, Pat. I think it’s obscene.”

  He raised an eyebrow, his lips sneered. “What happened to love, honor, and obey, Jess?”

  “I never said ‘obey,’ Pat. And I’ve always honored you.”

  “You call this honor!” His gesture included the house, the state of affairs, everything.

  She shut her eyes wearily. “I didn’t cause the earthquake, Pat. When Bio-Tech moved here, you chose to come with me. And you chose to turn down all the jobs you were offered once we got here.” None of them had been world shaking, true, but some of them had been interesting, and any of them might have led to something better.

  “Well, now I choose something else. And if you won’t do what I want for a change, then t’hell with you, I want a divorce.”

  She recoiled from that anger as from a snake, her skin prickling, her mind seeking cover, a moment’s dizzy cowering before she rejected such evasion. He had only said what she herself had thought recently, what she’d said to Val, what she’d almost hoped Patrick would say, so she wouldn’t have to.

  Her reply surprised even her with its tone of weary composure. “Then let’s have a divorce. Whenever you like.”

  His eyes opened wide, as though he’d been struck, hit from some totally unexpected quarter. “J-j-just like that?”

  “What do you want me to say, Pat? We’ve had two children, Peg and Carlotta. That’s the number we agreed on. I’m not going to be dosed with hormones to bring one more child into a world that’s already dying from excess people. But that’s only my point of view. Yours is yours. You want to get back into politics, and you’ve said yourself that you have the wrong religion to have a political future here in Utah. I presume you will have a future if you move back to California.”

  “I’ve been ap-approached by the Alliance. They wan’ me for a candidate, yeah,” he snarled, trying to be dignified and succeeding only in sounding drunkenly spiteful.

  Another deep breath. “The Alliance. They’ve always claimed to be nonpartisan. Are they sponsoring candidates these days?”