by Lisa Alther
He sat down opposite me and unzipped his jumpsuit to the waist. He was wearing his tight red shirt, the one from the Vietnam blood drawing that displayed his impressive musculature. I studied those taut sinewy muscles, trying not to be too obvious about it. His body was so different from a woman’s, with which I had been mostly occupied for almost three years. Eddie’s body was all firm mounds and smooth curves and secret folds. One model probably wasn’t any better or worse than the other, but they certainly were different.
I cleared my throat, trying hard to think of some unprovocative topic for discussion. ‘Well,….’ we said in unison. Then we laughed nervously in unison.
‘I have a second reason for being here,’ Ira admitted. ‘I sell life insurance. No, wait! Before you tune me out, just listen to what I have to say. Now, I know that you and your friends are pretty independent women. But have you ever thought about what happens if one of you were to die? That sounds pretty morbid, but it’s a topic we all have to face sometime or other, right? Okay, so traditionally, people have thought of life insurance as something a man takes out to provide for his wife and children should he die. Well, you don’t have children to look out for, I gather, but you do have a chance to provide for the people closest to you, should something happen to you. There must be someone who could profit from your death, right? Uh, that’s not exactly what I meant…’
I hadn’t tuned Ira out. I was listening carefully. This wasn’t the first time the topic had occurred to me, of what would happen to Eddie if I suddenly died, which I was bound to entertain as an ever-present possibility, considering who had reared me. There was no way I could alter my trust fund so that Eddie could have my dividend checks. The fund would revert to the Major, who conceivably had gunmen on my trail for that very reason, since I hadn’t written home since picketing his factory. What could Eddie do to support herself when I lay six feet under? Things she would hate, things that would destroy her defiant spirit — waitressing, chambermaiding, secretarial work. She was poor, I was rich. It was through no fault of her own, and it was not to my credit. I should share the wealth, should make provisions to continue sharing it once I was gone.
Seemingly surprised at not being put down, Ira continued, his Victor Mature forehead gleaming with sweat from the stove heat. ‘Now, there are two types you might want to consider -term and whole life. Term requires a relatively small premium in return for which your beneficiary receives the face amount of the policy should you die within the term period. Whole life is more an investment. You pay premiums during your lifetime and should you live to ninety-six, you get the face amount back. Which plan you would choose would depend on your financial circumstances and your insurance goals. Do you mind if I ask what you live on?’
Abruptly I snapped out of my calculations. ‘Yes, I do. I don’t see that it’s any of your business.’
His eyes became wide and alarmed. ‘I’m sorry. I was just trying to help.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bark at you. I’m interested in what you’ve been saying, and I’m not sure how to proceed.’
‘Well, first of all, who’s living here with you?’
I glared at him suspiciously. ‘What does that have to do with anything?’ Suddenly, I was seeing him as the front man for the Stark’s Bog Marauders.
‘Well, I mean, if you’re thinking of insuring yourself, it helps to know how many people you’re trying to provide for, right?’
Just then our truck roared up the driveway. I glanced around guiltily. I had been talking alone with a man, with a Stark’s Bog snowmobiler — and I had been enjoying it. What was Eddie going to say?
‘I think you’d better go.’
‘Wouldn’t your friends like to hear about insurance possibilities?’
‘No, they wouldn’t,’ I assured him. ‘I want it to be a surprise,’ I added, to soften the fact that I was kicking him out. I opened the door and shoved him out. He stepped off the porch, zipping his Ski-Doo suit. As he waded through the broken bits of the Women’s Weekend ice sculpture, Eddie came stomping over.
She shook a fist at him, in which she clutched a piece of paper, and she yelled, ‘And you can tell your friends to go fuck themselves!’
He turned around, startled. ‘Look….’
‘Just go,’ I said grimly, pushing him toward his machine.
As he roared off, Eddie turned on me, trembling with rage. ‘So that’s what goes on here when I leave, you sneaky bitch! But I caught you.’
‘Nothing “went on,” Eddie, I assure you.’
‘Shit, Ginny! I may be poor, but I’m not dumb! I saw the way you two were looking at each other, all guilty and conspiratorial! Goddam it, I saw him putting his clothes on as he left! Stop lying to me, whore!’
I decided to fight fire with fire. ‘Shut up, you maniac! I said nothing went on and I meant it! I don’t lie, Eddie, and least of all to you. But so what if something were going on? Where are all your big ideas about sharing the wealth? Or don’t those ideas extend beyond sharing my dividend checks? What about all the garbage you’re always spouting about mingling with The People? Doesn’t that include mingling on terms of warmth and affection? I’ll tell you what, Eddie, I’ve put up with all I’m going to with this jealousy number. You’re really fucking me over. I swear to God, I’ve never been unfaithful to you, but you’re driving me right into Ira Bliss’s bed!’
‘Stop threatening me,’ she said, shocked to hear me talking back so forcefully.
‘I’m not threatening you. I’m just explaining what’s happening. I’m outlining for you the dynamics of our relationship so that you won’t be too surprised when things turn out the way you’re programming them to.’
We stood glaring at each other over the mountains of snow from the tumbled statue. I shivered.
‘Christ, I’m freezing,’ I mumbled, depleted of emotional energy. ‘Come inside and I’ll tell you why he was here.’
As we sat around the stove with Laverne, Eddie said wearily, ‘Let me tell you what happened first. We got to the office and found that a window had been smashed and the lock on the door had been sawed off. Wait. There’s more. Inside, red paint was splashed all over the walls and the furniture. The pamphlets had been burned in the metal trash can, and the ashes were dumped all over the floor. And one wall was literally papered with those damn “Abortion Is Murder” stickers.’
‘Oh God,’ I moaned, burying my face in my hands. ‘Clearly we’ve gone about this the wrong way.’
‘Us? What can you expect from a bunch of mentally retarded fascists?’
I decided not to point out that these ‘mentally retarded fascists’ were The People, the hope of the radical left.
‘Read this.’ She thrust her crumpled paper at me.
A childish, almost illegible handwriting on a piece of pink letter paper decorated with wild flower sketches read: ‘Dear Pinkos: If you want to raise your families in our town like normal people, and go to our church, and send your children to our school, we welcome you to Stark’s Bog. But if you want to destroy the family and defy the will of the Lord, we don’t need none of your kind around here corrupting our children. This is just a warning. Sincerely, Some Concerned Citizens.’
We three stared at each other with restrained terror.
‘I think we’re in over our heads,’ I suggested.
‘So you can see why I was upset when I drove up and saw that macho pig here,’ Eddie said. ‘I do apologize, Ginny.’
‘It’s all right.’
‘So why was that bastard here?’
‘Believe it or not, he was here to apologize for the other night. No kidding, he really was. And he was trying to sell us a life insurance policy.’
‘Oh no,’ Laverne groaned.
‘You didn’t buy one?’ Eddie asked.
‘I considered it.’
‘Oh God, life insurance!’ she wailed. ‘How bougie!’
‘Fine. Go ahead. Ridicule me. But what’s going to happen to the Free Farm, a
nd to you, if I die?’
‘If you die, well probably all die with you,’ Eddie said jocularly. ‘Or maybe I’ll throw myself on your funeral pyre.’
I was distinctly unamused. ‘No, really?’
‘I’m sure we’d figure something out. You’re not as irreplaceable as you seem to think.’
‘I could get all the money back in about seventy years,’ I pointed out thoughtfully.
Laverne and Eddie fell out of their chairs with laughter.
All of a sudden, Eddie stopped laughing and said darkly, ‘I don’t happen to buy that.’
I shrugged. “Well, it’s the man’s profession. I guess he should know.’
“No, I mean I don’t buy the idea that insurance is his profession.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Whoever heard of selling life insurance to women?’
‘Not even to liberated women like us?’
‘What kinds of questions did he ask you?’
I tried to reconstruct the scene. “He asked what we lived on and whom I was living here with.’
‘Aha! I knew it! He’s an FBI agent! I’m sure of it!’
Laverne was massaging her left thigh thoughtfully. ‘Oh, come on, Eddie,’ she said.
‘Look, he was a decent friendly man, Eddie. That’s all.’
‘He let you believe he was decent. Don’t you see, Ginny? He’s trying to make you fall for him so that he can use you as an informant.’ Her eyes were gleaming.
‘Crap! You’ve been watching too many grade B movies.’
‘Look, I’m not holding it against you, Ginny. But he’s definitely putting the make on you. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. Now, I’m not saying that you’re responding — even though you have been out of the office several times when I’ve stopped by…But I just want you to be aware of what’s going on so that you won’t get hurt. And so that you won’t hurt us. The man is an FBI agent, Ginny. I’m sure of it.’
‘You flatter yourself, Eddie. Why should the FBI waste its time on small-time hippies like us?’
Eddie looked injured. ‘Well, lots of reasons — drugs, political protests, the money we’ve given to countercultural enterprises. Maybe they think we’re concealing political fugitives or draft dodgers. Remember, we’re citizens of a fascist state. Why, I can think of any number of things we’ve done that might merit attention from the FBI.’
‘You’re crazy!’
‘I may be. But I know what I know. And I know that you’d better watch out for that man.’
‘You’re not jealous or anything like that?’
‘Me? Jealous?’ She laughed. ‘Jealousy is a bourgeois emotion based on property instinct, and I don’t believe in private property. You’re a grown woman, Ginny. You’re free to come and go as you like, to choose friends and lovers as you deem appropriate. I wouldn’t think of trying to restrict your options in any way whatsoever. I just want you to be cognizant of the possible political repercussions that your indiscriminate balling might have on your sisters, that’s all.’
‘What balling? Christ, Eddie, I just met the man formally today! Anyway, I don’t ball indiscriminately. You know that. But lay off me, or I might.’
‘Don’t threaten me, Ginny.’
‘I’m not threatening. I’m just warning.’
‘And I’m warning you.’
‘Well, now that we’re both well-warned…’
One night after supper we all sat around the stove chewing peyote buttons that were the consistency of orange peels. I was nibbling at mine, trying to avoid swallowing. Atheliah was sharpening her ax. Mona, in languid bumbling movements, was making a couple of dried arrangements with weeds and seedpods she had gathered through the snow in the meadow that afternoon. Scattered liberally through each arrangement were stalks of dried marijuana, which heretofore had hung in bunches from the kitchen beams. She was trying to conceal them in preparation for the FBI raid that she and Eddie were convinced was about to descend upon us.
Laverne was massaging herself behind her collarbones with both hands, her blond curly head back and her green eyes closed with contentment. Eddie was sitting facing me, holding my head between her hands and tilting it this way and that. ‘No, really, Ginny,’ she insisted. ‘I think I can see the Indian in you. In your forehead and your cheekbones. Well, in your coloring, too, for that matter.’
‘It’s just one thirty-second of me, Eddie. Everyone has sixteen great-great-great-grandmothers, and only one of mine was an Indian. Her contribution is very diluted, I’m sure.’
‘No, I definitely see it. Don’t you, Mona?’
‘Far out,’ Mona muttered, her bruised eyes beginning to glaze over behind her purple lenses, and her straight black hair getting tangled up in her dried weeds.
We heard a roar down by the beaver pond. Eddie jumped up and stalked to the window and looked out.
‘Come here quick!’
We all raced to the window. It was very dark out, but as we stood watching, headlights appeared all along the hilltops behind the pond. They wound their way down toward the pond, back and forth through the bare trees. More kept coming, rank after rank, over the hills from town.
The pond had frozen by now, and the machines proceeded out onto the ice. The whining roar was deafening, even at our distance and inside the cabin. There must have been a hundred or more. It looked like a coven of witches assembling.
Before we knew it, a bonfire was blazing on our shore. Races were under way across one end of the pond. At the other end, the beavers’ frozen mud lodge had been packed with snow and was being used as a jump, as the more daring drivers hurtled off it at top speed, flew through the air, and landed with a jolt many yards in front of it.
We looked at each other hopelessly. The five of us against a hundred Stark’s Bog thugs and assorted wives and girlfriends. We resumed our seats in the kitchen. Mona passed around more peyote buttons, and we sat chewing them like cows their cud. When we went to bed, the party to which we were not invited was still in progress. We crammed pillows over our ears and finally managed to sleep — very late.
The morning after our fifth sleepless night, Eddie organized our defense. We carried bucket after bucket of water onto the pond surface. The race track was lightly packed with snow. With our buckets we created discreet patches of glare ice, with special attention to the spots at which the machines made turns.
That night, in order not to miss the action, we put on our skis and glided down to the pond edge for ringside seats. There were no bushes to hide behind. But we felt confident that if we sat still, our presence on that moonless night would go unnoticed.
At what had become the usual time, the headlights appeared on the hilltops and wove down to the pond. For a while, the drivers — men, women, and children — loitered on the ice socializing and tossing around empty cans and papers and bottles. Then the races got under way. Like the charioteers in Ben Hur, two drivers, on their knees in their seats, would start out even. Scowling and shouting obscenities, they would climb to higher and higher speeds, each straining to pull ahead.
Several races were run without a hitch. Our icy patches appeared to be a bust. Just as we were about to herringbone back to the cabin, a machine suddenly spun sideways out of control. Its driver flipped high in the air. As the machine spun, it crashed into a second machine, causing that one to lurch sideways and dump its driver on the ice. I was watching with dread, waiting to see if the man who had flown through the air was hurt. I hadn’t expected such dramatic results from our little stunt. As I sat with my heart in my throat, Eddie started cackling with glee.
‘Shut up, Eddie,’ I said, gouging her with my elbow.
She was howling louder and louder. Soon the other three joined her, rolling in the snow and screaming with delight.
Some men were squatting examining the icy patch. They looked up and glanced around.
‘They’ll hear us,’ I whispered.
Unfortunately, they already had. The man who had
flown through the air was walking shakily on the arm of another man, flexing his knee joints. He had removed his helmet. I could see that it was Rodney. And the man with Rodney was none other than Ira.
Rodney stared toward my friends who lay writhing in the snow with laughter. Someone turned his machine around so that the headlights lit us up as though we were on stage.
Rodney limped over to his machine and hopped on. He headed right at us.
‘He’s going to run us down!’ I yelled to the others. I started waddling ducklike on my skis away from the pond.
Eddie leapt up and poled herself fast out onto the ice right into Rodney’s path. His headlights shone directly on her as he bore down at forty-five miles an hour. Eddie stood there calmly on her skis, her hands poised on her poles.
‘Get out of the way, Eddie!’ I screamed, as the machine bathed her in its flickering headlights.
Just as the machine reached her ski tips, Eddie deftly jumped sideways. As she did so, she raised her arms high over her head and planted her pointed ski poles in Rodney’s sides, like a banderillero planting darts in a charging bull. Rodney screamed.
The four of us halted our frantic stumblings up the hill, turned around, and began schussing toward Eddie to drag her away.
In a blind rage, the poles sticking out of his sides and swaying in the wind, Rodney spun around and headed back for Eddie, who was standing placidly, evidently awaiting her death, hypnotized like a deer by car headlights.
Ira ran to his Sno Cat and hopped on and also roared toward Eddie. Oh no, was he going to run her down, too? She didn’t stand a chance of dodging two of them. She had been right all along: Ira was no friend. He was in league with the others. Mona and Atheliah and Laverne and I poled frantically across the ice.
I watched in terror as the two hulking machines converged on Eddie, who stood there without flinching. Then I realized that Ira was trying to force Rodney off course, like a police cruiser pulling over a speeder. Their front runners collided, sending up a flurry of sparks. As Ira edged Rodney ever so slightly out of his direct line on Eddie, he screamed to her, ‘Get out of here!’