A Friend of the Earth (28 page)

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 if 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?'

‘The Maneater of the Luangwa,' Tierwater said, shifting the weight off his bad leg.

‘Yes, sir, mighty impressive.' Quinn had his back to Tierwater now, gazing up at the lion. ‘Had a bear once,' he said, ‘nothing as impressive as this, of course, but I'd put the arrow in her myself, if you see what I mean, and I was attached to it. The taxidermist represented her couchant – lying there like a big spaniel, that is – which was all right, I suppose, though I would have preferred her rampant myself. Mavis, my first wife, hated the sight of her, and that was a sad thing, because she wound up taking her to the dump when I was off in Tulare on an arson investigation.' He sighed, swung round on the rotating pole of one fleshless leg. ‘But I see you're having yourself a drink there, and I was just wondering – ? Because I'd love one myself. Scotch with a splash of water, if it's not too much trouble. And if you've got Dewar's, that'd be brilliant.'

Tierwater had seen this movie too, a hundred times – the self–righteous criminal and the unassuming detective – and yet he was playing right along, as locked into this role, this new role, the one he'd never auditioned for, as if it had been scripted. So he poured the man a drink, not so much nervous now as on his guard, and curious, definitely curious. Was this a friendly visit, one yokel neighbor rubbing up against another? Or was it about the gutted Cats and all the rest, was it about the fire? Because, if it was about the fire, he'd already said all he had to say on that subject – months ago, on a barstool – which is to say, no, he hadn't seen anything suspicious.

‘No, sir,' Quinn wheezed, poking round the room like a tourist in a museum while Tierwater stood at the counter, pouring scotch, ‘I'm up here enjoying myself now,' and he might have been talking to himself – or answering Tierwater's unasked question. ‘My family's had a cabin here for twenty–some–odd years, did you know that? Up in back of the Reichert place? We got in when they first passed the bill allowing them to
develop this little tract – lucky, I guess.' A pause. He looked Tierwater dead in the eye. ‘To get in before the environmentalists started raising holy hell about it, I mean.'

‘Ice?' Tierwater asked.

‘Just a splash of water, thanks.'

Tierwater saw that he had a magazine in his hand now –
The New Yorker —
and he seemed to be examining the address label, but Tierwater (or Andrea, actually) had thought of everything, and that label read Tom Drinkwater, Star Route #2, Big Timber, CA 93265. ‘But, no, I'm not up on business this time – though the fire and all that vandalism still dogs me, it does, because I don't feel I've done my job till those skulking cowards and arsonists are behind bars, where they belong; no, I'm just tracking a little bear. For when the bow season opens up – in August, that is. I just like to pick out a sow and follow her around till I know her habits as well as I know my own. Then I know I can get her whenever I want her.'

So he was a hunter – what else would you expect? A killer of animals, a despoiler of the wild, a shit like all the rest of them. Insurance investigator. Yes. And what did they insure? The means of destruction, that's what.

Tierwater handed him his drink and gave him the steadiest look he was capable of under the circumstances. And how had he felt about the fire? In reality? Good, he'd felt good. And more: he'd felt like an avenger, like a god, sweeping away the refuse of the corrupted world to watch a new and purer one arise from the ashes.

Thirty–five thousand acres, Ty
, Andrea had cried, had shouted, so close to his face he could feel the aspirated force of each syllable like a gentle bombardment,
thirty–five thousand acres of habitat, gone just like that. What about the deer, the squirrels, the trees and ferns and all the rest?
He'd turned away, shrugged.
Fire's natural up here, you know that – the sequoia cones can't even germinate without it. If you did a little research or even picked up a nature book once in a while instead of plotting demonstrations all the time, you'd know it's the most natural thing in the world
. Coming right back at him, she said,
Sure, sure, but not if you start it with a match
.

‘Cheers,' Quinn said, as Tierwater handed him the drink. ‘But what happened to your leg – or is it your ankle?'

Tierwater picked up his own drink – careful now, careful – and settled into the
mopane
armchair before he answered. ‘Just one of those things. We were out for a walk the other day, Dee Dee and me, right on the road here, and I wasn't looking and stepped off the shoulder. Twisted my ankle. No big deal.'

‘Hah!' Quinn cried, and he was as wizened as a monkey, all spidery limbs and one big bloated liver. ‘Getting old, is what it is. Reflexes shot, muscles all knotted up. And your knees – they're the first thing to go. Then this.' He pointed to his crotch and arched an eyebrow. ‘Oh, I could tell you, believe me.' Sinking into the chair across from Tierwater, he paused to gulp at his drink – a double, in a glass the size of a goblet, because Tierwater was taking no chances: get him drunk and see if he tips his hand. And then, into the silence that followed on the heels of this last revelation, Quinn dropped his bomb: ‘So how's the book coming?'

(I was within an ace of saying, What book?, half cockeyed myself at that point, but panic does wonders for the mind, better than neuroboosters any day, and I barely fumbled over the reply. Which was
, ‘Fine.'
This was our cover, of course – I was an aspiring novelist, working on my first book, and we'd come up to the mountain, my wife, Dee Dee, and my daughter, Sarah, and me, to rent our old friend Ratchiss' place so I could have some peace and quiet to work in.)

‘Well, I'm glad to hear it,' Quinn said, setting the glass down on the coffee table. ‘I don't know how you people do it – writing, I mean – it's just beyond me. People ask me, do I write, and I say yes, sure: checks.' He had a laugh over that one, wheezed and coughed something up, then took a restorative gulp of Tierwater's scotch. Or Ratchiss', actually. ‘A novel, right?' he said, cocking his head and pointing a single precautionary finger. ‘Would that be fiction or nonfiction?'

‘I, uh, well, I'm just in the beginning stages –' Tierwater lifted his own glass to his lips and drank deeply.

Quinn leaned forward, all eagerness. ‘So tell me, if it's not a secret – what's it about?'

There was a pause. Tierwater went for his drink again. A hundred plots, subjects, scenarios crowded his brain. He could hear each individual flame licking away at each molecule of the split and seasoned wood, breaking it down, converting matter to energy, murdering the world. ‘Eskimos,' he said finally.

‘Eskimos?'

Tierwater studied the bloodless face. He nodded.

Quinn sat stock–still a minute. All this time he'd been in motion, pressing, probing, snooping, rocking back and forth in his chair as if he were hooked up to a transformer, and now, suddenly, he was still. ‘Well, now, that's a charge,' he said finally, and gave a low whistle. ‘Now, isn't it?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I mean it's your lucky day, Tom. You're staring at a man who spent two years in Tingmiarmiut among the Inuit – back in the days when I was working for British Petroleum, that is. You spend much time up there?' Suddenly he slapped his knee and gave out a strangled cry. ‘By Jesus God, I'll bet you we know some of the same people – '