A Friend of the Earth (16 page)

He was almost his usual self, and this was his wife, and he loved her. He was almost in Oregon. He was alive. It was the morning of the day on which he was going to see his daughter, one way or the other.

‘Au contraire,'
he said, ‘they sleep all day, in their graves. Or for weeks or months at a time. Until the
houngan
summons them to rise up and commit acts of mayhem, that is. And can you really blame them – the zombies, I mean?' A jay screeched from someplace nearby. He smelled coffee. Heard children – high, colliding voices and running feet. ‘What does the map say?'

The map said what he already knew: that Titusville was in Josephine County. Period. It didn't indicate whether there was a school there, a gas station, a firehouse or a café where some innocuous tourist or long–lost relative could inquire about farmers who took in foster children. That was all right. He felt good for the first time since he'd stuck his feet in that dark trough of cement – at least he was moving, at least he was doing something. He'd find her. He knew he would. It was the next step he was foundering on: what then? He pictured her out in some cinematic barnyard, all the colors true, geese bobbing, hogs snuffling, and Sierra in the middle of it, pitching hay in a pair of bib overalls in the company of four or five cross–eyed orphans and snub–nosed runaways. And then he saw himself emerging from the car – and he was in her point of view now – emerging from the car in triumph, radiant and tall and unafraid, climbing the fence, striding across the yard and taking her in his arms.

They made Titusville by noon, Tierwater too wrought up to eat breakfast, Andrea placidly munching a stale American cheese on white and washing it down with a Diet Coke as the scenery scrolled by. The town was anonymity itself, fast–food outlets creeping out along the highway, an uneven mouthful of older buildings, hand–lettered signs advertising antiques and going–out–of–business sales, old men on a bench, adolescents clustered around a sleek white convertible. Andrea sauntered into the local gas station and let her halter top do the talking while Tierwater sat hunched in the car, disguised as a timber person (jeans, workboots, plaid shirt and 49ers cap). The car itself was a disguise, a turd–brown Chevy Nova with some damage to both rear fenders, the trunk and the rear bumper, loaned out for the occasion by one of the Los Angeles chapter's volunteers (the housewife, divorced, angry, name of Robin Goldman). He watched Andrea's movements through the crusted window of the garage as she leaned across the counter in black spandex, a refugee from the ballet school in Eugene, and worked the two teenagers there like a fortune–teller. (‘You know those foster kids?' ‘Who, you mean out the Billrays'?' ‘Who'd you think I was talking about? They're
out there past the school, aren't they?' ‘Uh–huh, second right, Cedar Street.' ‘Big white house?' ‘Naw, it's blue now.')

It wasn't what Tierwater had been expecting – no farm, no cows, pigs, chickens, goats, not even a dog – just a big shining turquoise house set in a clearing hacked out of the woods. There was a vegetable garden to one side of it, with some sort of plow or rototiller abandoned in the high grass in back of a substantial stand of corn, and a shuttered shed out on the road that advertised SWEET CORN, TOMATOES, SUMMER SQUASH, but nobody, not even a suburban teenager under duress, would describe the place as a farm. A yellow Subaru was parked in the driveway. The windows caught the sun and held it. Nothing moved, not so much as a bird flitting across the lawn or a butterfly suspended over the peonies.

They drove by twice, once at normal speed so as not to arouse suspicion, and then very slowly, falteringly, like the lost tourists they were planning to impersonate. ‘Go ahead, Ty,' Andrea prodded him, ‘pull into the driveway already – if she's there, maybe we'll see her, signal to her or something. If she's not, she's not. We'll dig some more. Okay? So pull in already.'

Tierwater, in this moment of truth, found himself strangely – and sadly – unable to act. He'd brought the car to a stop on the blacktop road just past the driveway, and when he looked over his shoulder to see about backing it up, discovered that there was another car behind him. Direcdy behind him – right on his bumper, in fact. The driver was an old lady – sixty, seventy, it was all the same to him, senile no doubt, a puff of white hair and some sort of kerchief round her neck. She was just parked there, staring at him through the outsized lenses of her glasses as if she were at the drive–in waiting for the show to start. He flagged his arm – go on, pass me, I'm just parked here for the rest of my life – but she didn't seem to comprehend the gesture. Out of the corner of his eye he caught movement now up at the house, activity around the Subaru, a kid – not Sierra – and a trim–looking man in a short–sleeved white shirt, slam, slam, the distant soft concussion of both doors shutting simultaneously, followed by the sound of an engine revving. Another gesture for the old lady, but she was planted behind the wheel of the car – a Cadillac of the fin era – and worse, the car was blocking the driveway.

‘What now?' Tierwater demanded, his teeth clenched, stomach churning, all the many mountains of shit in the world piled high around him. He was looking at Andrea, looking for someone to blame, and she
was the prime candidate. By default. ‘That could be them – that could be them right there – what do I do?'

The Subaru had come to a stop at the end of the drive, two mild faces caught behind the untinted glass of the windshield, looks of mild surprise for the old lady in the Cadillac, but no horn–hammering impatience or big–city sneers, the broadest of neighborly grins already blooming. The trim man – and Tierwater was calculating now – looked to be about thirty, blond hair parted on the left side, a pair of smoked discs clamped over prescription lenses, the sort of thing a building inspector might wear on his day off. Next to him was a boy of sixteen or seventeen, eyes gouged into his head as if by the thumbs of a ceramic sculptor, flattop haircut, peach–colored. Andrea stepped out of the car.

‘Hello, there,' she said, shading her eyes with one hand and shaking out a conciliatory wave with the other. She was moving forward, along the weed–choked ditch that was the shoulder, addressing the windshield of the Subaru rather than the hunched and frozen form of the old lady. ‘I wonder if you could help us – we seem to've gotten lost. We're looking for' – and here she gave a glance with a smile wrapped round it to the old lady, for form's sake, before coming back to the Subaru – ‘for the Wilsons' place. Ted and Dodie Wilson?' And then she stopped, just beyond the Cadillac, not five feet from the Subaru's bumper.

The trim man – five eight, one forty–five, ironed right into his clothes – stepped out of the car, the neighborly smile turned up till it could roast meat. The door swung wide, and then the other door creaked open and the boy was standing there on the near side of the car. And what was he? Heavier than Tierwater had thought, meaty arms, the high–school linebacker's neck and shoulders, a look of nullity behind the smile. ‘The Wilsons?' the trim man said – but let's call him the building inspector, because that's what he was, then and forever, in Tierwater's mind anyway. ‘Wilkersons I know, and Westons, but nobody named Wilson. Not around here anyways.' Turning to the boy. ‘You know of any Wilsons at school, Donnie?'

Donnie didn't know of any. Tierwater got out of the car. ‘Hi,' he said, the length of his car and the old lady's Cadillac between them. ‘Sorry about this, but I guess I stopped to look at the map and the lady' – a gesture for the old lady, white gloves clamped on the steering wheel, eyes locked straight ahead – ‘she seemed to just stop here behind me and, well, I don't know – I mean, I can move the car …'

Smiling wider. ‘Oh, that's Mrs. Toffler. She's all right. A little
confused, is all. Nothing to worry about.' And now the building inspector was on the blacktop, moving round the fins and up the long coruscating fender to the driver's–side door – helpful; helpful, friendly and neighborly – the whole world a sweet and peaceable place.

That was when Sierra burst through the gleaming turquoise door of the house behind them and fled out onto the lawn, a dog and two scrawny teenaged girls at her heels. ‘Dad!' she screamed. ‘Dad, Dad!'

Tierwater froze. He watched as a new look came into the building inspector's eyes, a look that said,
Dad? Who's Dad?
The man was clearly bewildered. He glanced from Tierwater to Andrea and then over his shoulder at the charging trio and the yapping dog, and all the while Sierra kept shouting out that most intimate and filial sobriquet, her bare feet flapping on the lawn like precious white fish, her braces gleaming in the sunlight, her face saturated with a martyr's ecstasy. Tierwater felt his heart move in his chest, a deep–buried tectonic movement that made him shudder in every cell: the imposture was over. Time to improvise.

Meanwhile, the building inspector had begun to show signs of a dawning grasp of the situation, his eyes hardening first with suspicion, then anger and, finally, outrage. Behind him, still poised at the open passenger's door of the Subaru, the bull–necked kid settled into his shoulders as if awaiting the referee's whistle. ‘You, you,' sputtered the man, the building inspector, his face gone red suddenly, ‘you know you can't, you're not allowed – '

Sierra was coming on, pumping her arms, shouting, the dog – some kind of terrier – making a game of it, the other two girls falling back and jeering in their piping, incomprehensible adolescent voices. Tierwater glanced at Andrea, who hadn't moved a muscle, Andrea, his ally and accomplice, and what was her face telling him?
I told you so
, that's what. Her face was telling him that he was in the biggest trouble of his life, far bigger than anything Judge Duermer or Sheriff Bob Hicks had dished out yet – he was in direct violation of a court order and he'd better get a good long look at his daughter because he wasn't going to see her again till she was eighteen, not even a glimpse, not after this. ‘No contact!' the building inspector barked, and he was moving rigidly along the length of the Cadillac and past the sculpture of the old woman locked at the wheel, moving toward Tierwater with what could only be violent intent, and here came the bull–necked kid in a linebacker's trot down the apron of the lawn, even as Sierra, in perfect synchronization with the dog, leapt the ditch and threw herself into her father's arms.

‘No!' was all the building inspector could say, and he was vehement on this point of law and order and propriety, into the fray now and one hand locked on Tierwater's right arm and the other on Sierra's, trying to thrust them apart with the sort of effort he might have used on a pair of recalcitrant elevator doors.

(I have to say that I've never really enjoyed strangers taking hold of my arm, and that alone would have been enough to set me off, but this four–square WASP of a child–harboring Oregonian Child Protective Services person was trying to separate me from my daughter – and to what end, I could only imagine. Layer Andrea on top of that and the kid with the flattop and the terminally yapping, heat–seeking dog, and I don't think you could blame me for reacting in a way that would have disappointed Sheriff Bob Hicks.)

At first, Tierwater merely tried to protect his daughter, clutching her to him and interposing the mantle of his upper back between the sticks of her arms and the building inspector's clawing hands, but that was the stratagem of a rapidly dissolving moment. She'd fallen into his arms. He wanted to hold her, wanted to protect her. Was that a crime? He didn't think so, but before he could consider the issue or even draw his breath, the bull–necked kid was there, thick wrists and fat swollen fingers jerking at Sierra's shoulders, tug of war, the dog coming in low to complicate matters by snapping at Tierwater's unprotected shins and drooping socks. For one long suspended moment, they were doing a dance, all four of them, arms wrestling with arms, feet shuffling on the blacktop, grunting and straining while the dog played throat music and Andrea and the two skinny–legged girls shouted instructions from the sidelines, and then Tierwater found himself in another arena altogether.

He looked into the bull–necked kid's swollen face and saw release. That was all. Nothing he'd planned or even thought about, but when he brought his fist in over his daughter's shoulder and planted it in the center of that looming fat–constricted face, he felt himself sail right off the ground, as if gravity no longer operated on him. The kid fell magically away, all two hundred linebacking pounds of him, even as Tierwater turned to the building inspector. The man was still clawing at him, a look of anguish and prayerful appeal on his face, but the elbow Tierwater slashed to his windpipe was like a wing, fluttering and flapping and holding him aloft and out of harm's way.

He was thinking nothing, his posture defensive, but his daughter was behind him now and Andrea somehow in the driver's seat of the turd–brown car, shouting, ‘Ty! Ty!' He looked at Sierra. Her face was
bloodless and raw. She glanced over her shoulder at Andrea, and then looked back at the girls on the lawn and the turquoise house and the building inspector writhing on the blacktop with both hands wrapped around his throat, and she broke for the car with a tight little smile of triumph on her face. As for Tierwater, high as he was, he had no choice but to sidestep the kid when the kid came back at him in the spastic sort of lunge he might have made at a tackling dummy, and for good measure he gave the dog a deft kick that sent it skittering into the ditch with a yelp of surprise. And so what if he could see the lips of both the skinny girls working as they repeated the license–plate number to fix it in their memories? So what?

He had his daughter back now, and nobody was going to take her away again.