Backcast

by Ann McMan

  We were still a devout family, and remained very active in the life of the church. But all of that fell apart for me when I left home to attend college out of state. I had been awarded a very prestigious scholarship, and that led my parents to allow me to forestall my mission service until after I had completed my course of study in California. I had no idea when I left my home that September that I would never return there to live.

  In my viscera, I always knew that I was different. That didn’t really make me unique. I knew a lot of girls who were just like me. But in our huge community that felt small, we didn’t dare to discuss it. Those aspects of human experience were so far removed from our culture that we possessed no vocabulary to talk about them, even if we had wanted to. So I did the things I was supposed to do: I kept silent, I ignored my yearnings, and I prayed for release from my unnatural impulses.

  Everything changed for me the day I picked up a dog-eared novel one of my dorm mates had left on a bookshelf in the common area of our freshman hall. The cover displayed a black and white photograph of an androgynous-looking woman holding a lighted cigarette. Everything about her was compelling. Her clothes. Her haircut. Her tough-looking expression. I was captivated by the image. It haunted me. It was exotic. Alluring. Exciting. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Later that night, alone in my room, I read the book. I stayed up all night reading it. I read and reread passages that confused and thrilled me in equal measure. In one night, this smart, savvy, sexy, and seminal book called The Swashbuckler had opened my eyes, my mind, and my heart to a culture and a way of life I had never imagined—but knew without a doubt I was destined to make my own.

  I began to fantasize about the life I longed for. I wanted to reinvent myself—to be like Frenchy: strong, bold, and self-confident. Not ashamed of my sexuality. Willing to ask for what I wanted. Willing to embrace that I, too, could be twenty-one, good-looking, and go cruising for femmes in my best butch clothes.

  Yes. I could be like Frenchy. Just like Frenchy. Because she also knew what it meant to lead a secret life. Our worlds were different, and not different. I was a woman who loved women, but I still had to hide who I was from my family.

  As time went by, I concentrated on all aspects of my education. An important part of that was learning the language of my new identity. From the very beginning, I was addicted to the world of lesbian fiction. I read it all. And in those days, “all” wasn’t anything like the many thousands of titles that are available to women today. The first gay bookstore I set foot in was located on a quiet backstreet in what everyone agreed was the wrong side of town. The lesbian “section” was a shelf in the back room that contained a couple dozen titles. But as a freshly minted, wide-eyed, baby dyke, I didn’t care. Those books were like roadmaps to an undiscovered world. And I was a happy and voracious explorer.

  Finally, I reached the place where it was impossible for me to deny or disguise my emerging identity. So I told my parents the truth. After innumerable tearful and angry encounters, they sadly were forced to admit that they couldn’t shake or shame me out of my aberrant behavior. They retreated to the one course of action they believed was available to them: they disowned me. In short order, I was summarily excommunicated from the church. I was never permitted to see them, or my brothers, again—not even when my father fell ill, and died at age fifty-seven.

  I was on my own, and I had to learn to make a life for myself. Thanks to my scholarship, I could remain in college and complete my education.

  I had chosen my path, and it was up to me to make it work.

  But it wasn’t an easy time to come out. Being a lesbian was all about choosing the role you were going to play. And the culture was pretty unforgiving. The spectrum of options wasn’t as broad or expansive as it is today. That part of my new life was oddly similar to what I had always experienced growing up as a Mormon. It seemed that I would forever be consigned to follow a path that would force me into some kind of mold. Some type of role. Some school of thought or mode of expression. Some way of being that could be pinpointed and classified and filed away for future generations to dissect and cite as a reference point for what it meant to be this way or that way in any time that was far enough removed from the present day to warrant study.

  Three decades of fighting my way back from wrong turns, mistaken identities, abortive career choices, and failed relationships led me to discover that the most important role in my life would end up being the one I never chose. It would be the one that chose me.

  Two years ago, I was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. ALS. You might know it better as Lou Gehrig’s disease. But whatever you do or don’t know about it, only two aspects of it are really relevant: It’s rapidly progressive, and it’s invariably fatal.

  I didn’t know much about it, myself—I never had any reason to. But after my diagnosis, I learned that familial ALS could sometimes occur when only one parent carried the gene responsible. In a case like mine, where that parent had already died from the disease, the likelihood that I or my brothers would contract the condition increased exponentially.

  I guess you could say I drew the short straw.

  We all know that we’re going to die one day. We accept it and don’t think much about it—at least not until it intrudes upon us and demands our time and attention. The fact that I find myself ahead of the curve here is more inconvenient than annoying. I worry that I won’t have time to accomplish the work I’ve set out to do. Work that happily, finally feels important. That feels meaningful. That relates back to the place I started, so many years ago. Even at this vast and great remove, the tug of my connection to the prose of The Swashbuckler is like a lifeline.

  “My father didn’t die till he got where he wanted to be.”

  I didn’t know how true that was for my own father—or for his father, or for any of the fathers who preceded us all—but I know how true it will be for me. I am closer now than I have ever been to where I always wanted to be. And wonderfully, mysteriously, unpredictably, I have managed, at the end of so much searching, to find the right companion for the remainder of my journey.

  Frenchy said it just right. “If courage means being scared and going ahead and doing it anyway . . . if that’s courage, then I’m courageous every day of my life . . .”

  Epilogue

  When Mavis turned her truck off Route 2 onto the road that led to the inn, she could see that the parking lot outside the office was crammed with cars from the county sheriff’s department. They were parked at rakish angles, blocking access to the breezeway that led to the lake—and all of their light bars were ablaze with strobing blue lights.

  Great.

  She was pretty sure that whatever was going on had to have something to do with Barb’s group of wackos. It had their twisted fingerprints all over it.

  She unlocked the storage console that sat between her front seats and withdrew her badge and her automatic. Her instincts told her she’d probably end up needing them both.

  One thing Mavis knew how to do was trust her instincts. Working as a bailiff in the San Diego County Jail had given her plenty of time to hone her skills.

  She could hear the yelling and the fussing before she even cleared the breezeway. It looked like every guest at the inn was standing on the lawn, shading their eyes and watching whatever was happening on the beach at the base of the cliffs.

  Page Archer was there, too, slowly shaking her head in disgust. Mavis approached her.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  Page waved a hand at the spectacle below. “You tell me. I was inside getting set up for breakfast when I heard the commotion. The next thing I knew, there were people screaming everyplace and that damn pontoon had run aground right in the middle of that sunrise service. I didn’t even know those crazy women had taken the boat out. I thought they were all still in their rooms, sleeping it off.”

  “Who called the cops?”

  Page pointed at two people standing off near the horses
hoe pits. “I think they did.”

  Mavis recognized the two Canadians who were usually the biggest burrs under Viv’s saddle. She could see the sheriff’s deputies, standing in a solemn row in front of the stairs that led down to the water. She made an oblique gesture toward them.

  “Why aren’t they doing anything?”

  “You mean the Keystone Cops?” Page rolled her eyes. “I think they’re afraid of lesbians.”

  “In Vermont?” Mavis was doubtful.

  “I know. Go figure.”

  Mavis took a deep breath. “Well. Guess I’d better get down there and see what’s what.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you did. And Mavis?”

  Mavis looked back at her.

  “You have my permission to exercise extreme prejudice.”

  Mavis gave her a cocky smile. “I think we understand each other.”

  “That we do.” Page waved her along. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a wedding breakfast to attend to.”

  She turned on her heel and marched back toward the restaurant.

  Mavis approached the queue of police officers and did her best to appear casual. The melee raging below appeared to be gaining steam.

  “You boys planning on doing anything about that?” She nodded her head toward the fracas.

  One of the uniformed officers looked at her with owlish eyes. “No ma’am. We aren’t checked out for this kind of thing.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  Another one of the deputies spoke up. He had pale skin and an advanced case of acne. “We don’t have riot gear.”

  “Not much call for that up here in the islands,” another colleague chimed in.

  Mavis watched the proceedings below. Six of the world’s most esteemed lesbian authors appeared to be going mano-a-mano with an equal number of the white-robed, born-again nut jobs who had arranged to use the beach that morning for a sunrise service. Any sane person would say that what was going on was already out of hand—but Mavis could tell that it had the potential to get a lot worse if somebody didn’t intervene—and soon.

  She pulled out her San Diego PD badge and flipped it open.

  “You boys mind if I take a crack at it?”

  The apparent leader of their contingent looked her credentials over.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Great.” She pulled out her service weapon. “Don’t worry. I have my permit.”

  He nodded. “You let us know if you need backup.”

  “Yeah.” Mavis racked the slide on her automatic. “Will do. You just concentrate on keeping these rubberneckers back.”

  She picked her way down the stairs that led to the dock and the beach. Quinn’s pontoon was crashed up against the rocks—its motors were still running. Her La-Z-Boy had listed across the deck and was precariously close to sliding into the water.

  What Mavis hadn’t observed from her vantage point on the ledge above was that dozens of fish were jumping out of the water like crazy. She could see several of them writhing and flopping around on the deck of the boat. Others were swimming in determined circles and jumping toward the pontoon like they were caught up in some kind of frenzy.

  Remnants and broken implements of articles being used in the sunrise service were strewn all over the rocks. There had to be two dozen people down there—most of them part of the disrupted religious celebration.

  No one looked happy.

  She took a deep breath and pushed her way through the circle of bystanders that surrounded the perimeter of the action.

  “Knock it off!” she bellowed.

  No one paid any attention to her.

  “I said, knock it the fuck off!”

  Still no response.

  Okay. Fine by me.

  She raised her service weapon and fired a sequence of three quick rounds over the open water.

  The beach fell silent.

  “Now that I have your attention, let me explain how this is going to go down.”

  Preacher-man immediately started to argue. Then V. Jay-Jay started up. Viv was next in line.

  Mavis fired off another round.

  “You,” she pointed a finger at the preacher. “Shut up. You?” She pointed at V. Jay-Jay. “Siddown. You?” She pointed at Viv. “Get your hand off that woman’s ass.”

  They all complied.

  “Now I’m going to ask one person from each side of this goat fuck to explain to me what the hell is going on.” She turned to Kate Winston, who was looking like she wanted to be anyplace but there. “Let’s start with you.”

  Kate opened her mouth to speak, but Towanda cut her off.

  “We didn’t do anything wrong. Those damn fish started charging the boat!”

  Mavis made rapid slashing movements across her throat. “I said I wanted to hear from her. You shut the fuck up.”

  Towanda fell silent and retreated behind Viv, who now had her hands in her pockets.

  Kate cleared her throat and began her narrative.

  “These women invited us to go out for a sunrise cruise—you know—to celebrate our wedding.” She took hold of Shawn’s hand. “We knew we weren’t going to get much sleep—not after the party ran so late. So we agreed. We met everyone at the dock and we set out for a quick ride around the island. We didn’t plan on being out for more than an hour. It was lovely. The sunrise was glorious. When we knew it was time to head back in, Darien started the boat and said she would drive us back to the hotel. That’s when Viv spoke up and said there was something we needed to do before we went back.”

  Mavis took the bait. “What was that?”

  “Well.” Kate looked nervously at Viv. “Apparently, she and Towanda had raided the kitchen and stolen the big bowl of tomato aspic. They said they wanted to deep-six it in the lake as a wedding gift to us.” She shrugged. “It seemed kind of sweet. So we waited while they dumped it all into the water.”

  Mavis thought that seemed pretty harmless. In fact, she was half-tempted to thank Viv for her thoughtfulness.

  “Was that it?”

  “No.” Kate shook her head. “A minute or two after they dumped it, something strange happened. It was like the water started boiling. Fish started appearing out of nowhere. Bass. Big ones. They were going crazy eating the stuff. Then they started charging the boat—diving at the deck. It was terrifying. We screamed at Darien to get us out of there. She tried, but only one of the damn motors would start.” She looked at Shawn. “It took us forever to get back across the lake—and all of those psycho fish were following us—like vigilantes. Finally, when we got closer to the inn the other engine kicked in.”

  Mavis was incredulous. “So you lost control of the boat and crashed into the sunrise service going on here?”

  Kate dropped her eyes. “Not exactly.”

  “What do you mean by not exactly?” Mavis smelled a rat.

  “Well. Darien thought she recognized one of the—celebrants. And it appeared to upset her. A lot.”

  Mavis glowered at Darien. “You did this on purpose?”

  Darien nodded.

  “Jesus H. Christ.” Mavis shook her head in disbelief.

  “Young woman, you shall not take the name of the Lord in vain.”

  Mavis glared at the tall, blond preacher.

  “Right. I suppose it’s your turn to talk. So—go right on ahead.”

  He puffed out his white-robed chest.

  “That unredeemed Sodomite,” he pointed an accusatory finger at Darien, “chose to embrace a path of unrighteousness and exercise her contempt for the Word of God by attacking me and this flock of faithful penitents. She has maliciously and willfully caused irreparable harm to my lawful mission to spread the truth of God’s love and power among the masses of this liberal and pagan oasis of sin. I demand that you hold her accountable for damages to my ministry and my person.”

  Mavis regarded him impassively.

  “What damages to your ministry and person did she cause other than disrupting your morning—whate
ver—service?”

  He reached down and picked up an empty wooden box and held it aloft.

  “One of my helpmeets was released when her infernal boat crashed into the middle of our celebration.”

  “Say what?” Mavis wasn’t sure what he was talking about.

  “Oh, for god’s sake.” Viv chimed in. “His damn snake got loose.”

  Mavis looked at her with incredulity. “Snake?”

  “Yeah.” She pointed an accusatory finger at the bank behind them. “That big motherfucker. Right there.”

  Mavis wheeled around to see what looked like some kind of water moccasin, coiled up against the base of a retaining wall made of stacked pink granite. It was gaping, and the interior of its huge mouth glowed as white as a naked light bulb.

  As soon as the rest of the assembly realized what she was staring at, they all began to scream and duck for cover.

  “Yeah. Not on my watch.” Mavis took careful aim and capped the viper.

  It was a classic kill shot.

  When the preacher protested, she cut him off sharply. “You got a complaint? You feel free to file it with those gentlemen right up there.” She jerked a thumb toward the line of deputies on the lawn above them. “I’m sure they’d be happy to take a statement from you—and hear all about your lawful explanation for why you brought an undisclosed, poisonous reptile into the middle of private property.”

  He fell silent, but it was clear he was still fuming. He fixed Darien with a murderous gaze.

  V. Jay-Jay noticed it and took a step toward him.

  Mavis held out a hand and stopped her.

  “I got this, little girl. You just tend to your woman.”

  She stepped back and addressed the celebrants. “I think we’re through here. Why don’t you folks all mosey along and see about acquiring some better sense?”

  She waited until they slowly picked up the salvageable pieces of their ceremony and headed for the steps to the lawn. The preacher was the last to leave. He looked back at all of them before he ascended the steps.