by T. C. Boyle
‘Sierra!’ I shouted, and the rain gave it back to me. ‘Sierra! Are you up there?’
I don’t really remember what the past few Christmases were like. One year – it might have been last year or five years ago, for all I know – Chuy and I went up to Swenson’s and had the catfish boat with gravy and stuffing on the side, and another time we sat in my living room and watched the buckets splootch while sharing one of the last twelve–ounce cans of solid white albacore on earth. We ignored the expiration date and ate it with capers and pita bread and a bowl of fresh salsa Chuy whipped up, and I remember we washed it down with sake heated in a pan over the stove. And what was on the radio? Ranchera music and a trip–hop version of ‘God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen.’ This year is different. This year it’s Andrea and April Wind and Yuletide cheer chez Pulchris.
Christmas morning I’m awake and waiting for the dawn as usual, Andrea snoring lightly beside me, the concept of a good night’s sleep as foreign to me now as jogging or biting into an apple sans forethought or even bending to tie my shoelaces without a whole string section of pain playing up and down my spine in a mad pizzicato. Sleep at my age comes like a blow to the back of the head, any time of day or night, and you’d better have a couch or an easy chair handy when you go down for the count (and don’t even ask about the old–old – they’re nothing more than zombies, staggering around on bird’s bones with twenty or thirty years’ accumulation of sleep deprivation bleeding out of their eye sockets). Anyway, the first thing I notice is that the rain has stopped. No rattling, no whooshing, no white noise like a lint screen inside your head, nothing but a profound early–Christmas silence, not a creature stirring, not even a Patagonian fox.
Up out of bed and into the clamminess, a pair of powder–blue boxer shorts climbing up my glabrous old man’s legs and cradling the brindled spectacle of my old man’s sexual equipment. Then the jeans, the plaid shirt and the rinsed–out jeans jacket, Grunge all the way, yes indeed. I’m thinking of Andrea’s present – and I know she’s expecting one, though every other breath out of her body for the past week has been a pro–forma denial (‘Oh, no, no, Ty, you don’t have to bother, really’) – wondering what totemic object to dig out of the water–logged mound of my possessions or to beg or borrow from Mac that would express what I’m feeling for her. Because what I’m feeling is gratitude, what I’m feeling is an affection so deep for this big–shouldered oblivious old lady in the bed at my feet that it’s verging dangerously close to love, and beyond love, to forgiveness and even – dare I say it? – bliss. I’m in love all over again. I am. Standing there in the dark, the silence so profound it’s beating in my veins with an unconquerable force, the force of life undenied and lived right on down to the last tooth in the last head, I’m almost sure of it. On the other hand, it could just be indigestion.
There’s no newspaper, of course, what with the flooding, and since magazines are scarce because of the lack of stock – paper, that is – I retreat to the lavatory with a mold–splotched copy of Muir’s The Mountains of California. This is a big room, by the way, a room the size of the average condo, with a six–person Jacuzzi and a tiled shower stall with dual heads, recessed lighting and a built–in bench for comfort, and it smells of Andrea, of her perfume and powders and skin rejuvenator. The walls are painted to resemble the aluminum garage doors of old, in honor of garage bands everywhere, the detail true right on down to three–dimensional handles and glittering rust spots (the portrait of Eddie Vedder, all eyes and teeth, I’ve long since turned to the wall, so as to be able to conduct my business in peace). In any case, I stoop to the faucet for a drink, just to rinse the night–taste out of my mouth, and then settle in for a long pre–Christmas–dinner bout with my comatose digestive tract. Relaxing, or trying to, I flip back the page and read of fantastical forests: The trees of the species stand more or less apart in groves, or in small, irregular groups, enabling one to find a way nearly everywhere, along sunny colonnades and through openings that have a smooth, park–like surface, strewn with brown needles and burs. Now you cross a wild garden, now a ferny, willowy stream …
I don’t know how long I’m lost in those memorial forests – the better part of an hour, at least – moving on from the unconquered trees to the adventures of the water ouzel and the Douglas squirrel, not even the faintest stirring of a movement down below, when Andrea raps at the door. ‘Ty?’ she calls. ‘You in there? I have to pee.’
‘Just a minute.’ I lurch up off the seat with a jolt of pain in both hips and my left knee, hoist my pants, flush, and close the book on my index finger to mark the place.
‘Ty?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Merry Christmas.’
The phrase takes me by surprise, the novelty of it, and beyond that, the novelty of the situation. We didn’t wish one another a merry Christmas in prison, and, as I say, Chuy and I have been on our own the last few years. Nobody has wished me anything in a long time, not even hate, despair or a lingering death. I’m moved. Moved almost to tears, as I’d been with the tinfoil angel in the hall. I’m halfway to the door, but then I remember to go back and wash up at the nearest of the four sinks, so I have to raise my voice to be heard through the solid plank of the door. ‘You too,’ I call, my voice echoing in the tomblike vastness of the place. ‘Merry Christmas.’
The Sierra Nevada, May–August 1990
Tierwater was feeling his age. He’d turned forty at the beginning of the month, an occasion memorialized by a discreet party out on the redwood deck. It was a small gathering, as it would necessarily have to be if FBI agents were to be excluded, consisting of his wife and daughter, Teo, Ratchiss and Mag (or Mug). Everyone, even Andrea, seemed to be in good spirits. They drank a California Viognier without worrying about the oak trees and other native species the vineyards had displaced, and as the evening turned chill, they disported themselves in the redwood hot tub without a murmur about the ancient giants felled for their momentary pleasure. Sierra – Sarah Drinkwater, that is, the cynosure of the junior high in Springville – went in to write an essay on ancient Mesopotamia after the birthday cake had been set ablaze, wished over, sliced up and divided, while the rest of the party lingered in the hot tub, global warming be damned, at least for the duration of the night. Mag, in a high energetic voice, volunteered the story of how he’d lost his face, with Ratchiss filling in the supporting details (He creep on me, because I am profound inebriate with the strong savor of palm wine on my lips, and I am dreaming of the long rains and millet when he come and snap him jaw), Teo and Andrea hatched plans for her covert participation in a coordinated series of protests along the northern–California coast and Tierwater got so drunk he’d had to go off in the woods and commune with nature a while – it was either that or vomit in the recirculating waters of the hot tub.
Tonight, though, he was only mildly drunk – just drunk enough to take the sting off. He’d twisted his bad knee and nearly fractured an ankle stumbling into a hole while trying to outrun the beam of a watchman’s flashlight up in Del Norte County two nights ago, and he was sitting in front of the fireplace, his leg propped up, judiciously anaesthetizing himself. The house was quiet. It had been quiet since the fire last summer, which had sent a ripple – no, a tidal wave – through all the West Coast chapters of Earth Forever! Thirty–five thousand acres had burned, and spokespersons up and down the coast fell all over themselves denying any involvement – E.F.!ers might have marched in the street and shouted slogans like ‘Back to the Pleistocene!’ but they strictly eschewed any illegal activity; it was only the disaffected fringe that sometimes, out of frustration and an overriding love of the earth, spiked a grove of ancient redwoods or blocked a culvert, but certainly the organization was there to protect the forests, not burn them down. And where did that leave Tierwater? Right where he wanted to be, on the unraveling edge of the disaffected fringe.
Teo, back safe in Tarzana, was especially vocal, deploring everybody and everything, even while the Tulare C
ounty Sheriffs Department expanded its investigation and Coast Lumber hired a pair of shuffling retirees from the local community to stand watch over the gleaming new Cats, wood–chippers, loaders and log trucks the insurance money had provided. (In their generosity, the insurers also provided a private investigator by the name of Declan Quinn, a shoulderless relic who sat permanently hunched over a pack of Camels at the Big Timber Bar and Mountain Top Lodge, chain–drinking Dewar’s and water and asking endlessly in a cancerous rasp if anyone had seen ‘anything suspicious.’) At the first whiff of smoke, Ratchiss had lit out for Malibu, and Andrea, though she stayed put and went through the motions of mothering and housewifery, devoted her every waking minute to roasting Tierwater for his lack of judgment, juvenility and criminal stupidity. Even Sierra weighed in. ‘It was really like mega–dumb, Dad,’ she said one night over home–made manicotti and the steamed vegetables she kept pushing from one corner of the plate to another. ‘What if they catch you? What if you go to jail? What am I supposed to do then – change my name to Sarah Dorkwater or something?’ The idyll was over. Definitely over.
And then it was his birthday, and both Teo and Ratchiss showed up. It was dusk, and they were out on the back deck, charring meat, when Teo ambled out of the woods in a pair of shorts and hiking boots. Ratchiss had arrived an hour earlier, the silver Land Cruiser packed to the ceiling with gifts and goodies, and he looked up from the grill and raised his gin and bitters in salute. ‘All hail,’ he said. And then: ‘Methinks yond Teo has a lean and thirsty look. How about a drink, my friend?’
Teo dropped his backpack on the planks and accepted a glass of iced gin with a splash of vermouth. He was shirtless, though the evening had begun to take on a chill (there was still snow out there in the woods, especially on the north–facing slopes), but then that was his pose: the insensible, the indefatigable, the iron man of the Movement. ‘It’s been a while,’ he said, ducking his head and taking Tierwater’s hand, ‘but hey, happy birthday, man.’ He nodded democratically at Mag, who stood behind the grill in a torpedoed freighter of smoke, basting the meat with his secret sauce, and then he was embracing Sierra and digging into his pack for the plain–wrapped gift he’d brought her. There were the usual exclamations – ‘You’re as tall as me now’ and ‘Let’s get this girl a basketball scholarship!’ – and then Andrea, who’d gone into the house for a sweater, stepped out onto the deck.
It was just a moment in a history of moments, but it bore watching. She was buttoning the sweater up the front, her hair swept forward, barefoot in a pair of jeans. ‘Teo,’ she exclaimed, and Tierwater saw the anticipatory smile, the quickened stride, watched them embrace, the tall woman and the short man, and he knew the answer to his question as surely as he knew it would be dark in half an hour and the sky would spill over with stars: of course she’d had sex with him. Fucked him, that is. Of course she had. Any fool could see that from the way they moved around each other, the familiarity of one organism with the other, all those dark and secret places, the commingled breath and shared fluids and supercharged emotions. But so what? So what? That was before he’d even met her – so what if she’d fucked whole armies? Tierwater was no puritan. And he wasn’t jealous. Not a bit.
After the meat and before the cake, there was a lot of discussion of strategy – of the upcoming ‘Redwood Summer’ campaign, of Andrea’s dyeing her hair or wearing a wig and coming down off the mountain to work behind the scenes and, eventually, of her coming in out of the cold altogether. Fred was working on it. A plea bargain, no time, just maybe community service, something like that. ‘And what about me?’ Tierwater had said. ‘Am I just supposed to stay here forever? And won’t it look a little fishy here – I mean, if my wife suddenly ups and deserts me?’
Teo just gave him a blank stare. Ratchiss looked away. And Sierra, who’d adjusted to her rural surroundings by ritualistically re–embracing the Gothic look (graveyard black, midnight pallor, ebony lipstick, the reinserted nose ring that drained all the remaining light from the sky), set down her soy burger and pitched her voice to the key of complaint: ‘And me?’
‘You’re out of the loop, Ty, at least for now,’ Teo said, flashing Sierra a quick smile of acknowledgment, and then coming back to him. ‘You’ve got to be patient. And nobody’s deserting anybody. I just think Andrea can be more effective if she – ’
‘And what does she think?’ Tierwater said, cutting him off and turning to his wife. ‘Isn’t that what matters here? Isn’t that what we’re talking about?’
Andrea wouldn’t look him in the eye – or she did look him in the eye, but it was the sort of look that flickered and waned and said, I want no part of this. She’d been unusually restrained all night, except when she was buzzing with Teo over tactics and the campaign to mobilize college kids for the protests, and now she just said, ‘It’s complicated, Ty. Beyond complicated. Can’t we talk about it later?’
And Ratchiss said, ‘Yeah, isn’t this supposed to be a celebration?’
It was. And Tierwater, itching with his insecurities and angers, drank himself into celebratory oblivion.
Now, two weeks later, he’d almost forgotten about it. Teo was gone, as were Ratchiss and Mag, and Andrea was still here, still playing Dee Dee Drinkwater to his Tom. It was night. All was calm. Tierwater had his leg propped up, a drink in his hand, four good chunks of wind–toppled pine on the fire, no sound but for the snap of the flames and the doomed doleful wail of Sierra’s Goth–rock leaking out of her speakers and through the locked door of her room like some new and invasive force of nature. He was just about to lift the drink to his lips when there was the dull thump of footsteps on the front deck, followed by a light rap at the door.
That altered things, all right.
He was transformed in that instant from the bruised eco–warrior taking his ease to the hunted fugitive living under a false name and called suddenly to task for his multifarious crimes. He froze, his eyes as glassy and dead as the eyes of the butchered animals staring down at him from the walls. The knock came again. And then a voice, gruff and hearty at the same time: ‘Tom? Tom Drinkwater? You in there?’
Where was Andrea? ‘Andrea!’ he shouted. ‘Can you get that? Andrea! There’s someone at the door.’ But Andrea couldn’t get it, because she wasn’t in the house, a small but significant piece of information that rose hopelessly to the surface of his consciousness even as he called out her name. She’d gone out half an hour ago with the flashlight and a sweater. Where? To walk the mile and a half to the bar and sit outside in the phone booth and await a call from Teo, very secretive, hush–hush, E.F.! business, Ty, so don’t give me that look –
‘Tom?’
‘Just a minute, I – ’ Tierwater’s gaze fell on the rack of big–bore rifles Ratchiss kept mounted on the wall just inside the door, and then he was up out of the chair and limping across the room. ‘Hold on, hold on, I’m coming!’
At first he didn’t recognize the figure standing there at the door. The weak yellow lamplight barely clung to him, and there was the whole brooding owl–haunted Sierra night out there behind him, a darkness and fastness that was like a drawn shade and this man on the doorstep a part of its fabric. ‘Tom – Jesus, I didn’t mean to scare you … Don’t you recognize me?’
The man was in the room now, uninvited, and it was the nagging raspy wheeze of the voice that gave him away, even more than the boneless face and dishwater eyes. It was Declan Quinn, the insurance investigator, all hundred and ten bleached alcoholic pounds of him, and Tierwater saw why he hadn’t recognized him right away: he was wearing some sort of camouflage outfit, buff, khaki and two shades of green, and his face was smeared with a dully gleaming oleaginous paint in matching colors. Greasepaint, that’s what it was, the very thing Tierwater himself employed on his midnight missions.
‘Jesus, Tom,’ he repeated, and the very way he said it —Jaysus — marked him for an immigrant, if not a recent one, and why hadn’t Tierwater noticed that before? ‘You look as i
f the devil himself had come for you.’ And then he let out a laugh, a quick sharp bark that trailed off into a dry cough. ‘It’s the getup, isn’t it? I completely forgot myself – but I’m not intruding, am I?’
‘Oh, no, no, I was just – ’ Tierwater caught a glimpse of himself in the darkened window and saw a towering monument to guilt, staved–in eyes, slumped shoulders, slack jaw and all. He’d been caught in a weak moment, taken by surprise, and though he was as articulate as anybody and fully prepared to act out his role onstage before a live audience, if that’s what it took, he couldn’t help wishing Andrea were here. For support. And distraction. This man was an investigator, a detective, and what was he doing in Tierwater’s living room, if Tierwater himself wasn’t a suspect?
Quinn laughed again. ‘Completely forgot myself. You see, I’ve been out back of your place the last three days, not four hundred yards from where we now stand, tracking a sow with two cubs. Out of her den now, but it’s right there, right out back, so close you wouldn’t believe it – but, Lord Jesus, you’ve got some heads here, haven’t you?’ He was pointing to the kongoni. ‘What is that, African? Or maybe something out of the subcontinent? It’s no pronghorn, I know that much.’
‘Well, it’d have to be African,’ Tierwater was saying, though the phrase out back of your place was stuck in his head like plaque on an artery, ‘because as far as I know that’s the only place Ratchiss really hunted – ’
‘Ah, yes, yes, Philip. Prince of a man, really. The Great White Hunter. Not many of them left in the world, are there? But a prince, a real prince. And look at this lion, will you? Now, that’s impressive. That’s the real thing, eh?’