A Friend of the Earth (42 page)

Tierwater had always been a careful worker, precise where another might be approximate, a model of concentration who never allowed himself to be distracted, even when he was a boy putting models together on a noisy playground or sitting at his father's drafting table creating his own blueprints of imaginary cities. His mother praised him for what was really an extraordinary ability in one so young, and his teachers praised him too. There was one in particular, an art teacher in the fifth or sixth grade – what was her name? – he could see her as clearly as if she were standing before him now, a tiny smiling woman not much older than Morty Reich's big sister – who really thought he had a talent, and not just because he'd mastered perspective drawing in a week and could sketch an unerring line, like the one he was drawing now, but –

He never got to finish the thought. Because just then, though the neck brace prevented him from turning round to acknowledge it, he felt a firm, unmistakable tap at his shoulder.

* * *

They came down hard on him this time. The State of California arraigned him on four counts of felony vandalism, and then the feds stepped in to charge him with violating parole, and that was the unkindest cut of all, because at the time of his arrest he had less than three weeks left till he was in the clear. Fred – and the defense attorney Tierwater had to hire to replace him when Fred begged off the minute he made bail – could do nothing. The press jumped gleefully on the case – this was Tierwater, Tyrone O'Shaughnessy Tierwater, the nudist radical who'd spent a naked month in the Sierras with his naked and busty wife, Andrea Knowles Cotton Tierwater, the high–flying E.F.! director and spokesperson, and here were the photos of that infamous stunt dredged up out of the files and reprinted with remarkable clarity on page one of the Metro section, nipples and genitalia airbrushed out so as not to offend puerile sensibilities, of course. The DA wouldn't bend, not with all that light shining on him. He made Tierwater plead to the face – plead on all counts, that is – and he was sentenced to two years on count one, the other three eight–month counts to be served consecutively, after which he'd be going back to Lompoc for six months under federal supervision. Tierwater was no mathematician, but no matter how he juggled the figures, they added up to fifty–four months – four and a half stupefying years.

But it got worse. He was ordered to pay restitution in the amount of eight hundred and seventy–five thousand dollars for damage to the vehicles and earth–moving equipment, not to mention the compromised stanchion, which required full replacement of the tower in question. The press wasn't calling him a hyena yet – that would come later – but there wasn't a friendly reporter out there, not even Chris Mattingly, who went on the record condemning any sort of monkeywrenching as anarchy, pure and simple.
Newsweek
ran a feature on ecotage, replete with the usual diagrams, a titillating breakdown of the various techniques employed, from tree–spiking to fire–bombing corporate offices, and a photo of a watchcapped and greasepainted Tierwater in a little box on the front cover. And the good honest law–abiding image–conscious hypocrites at Earth Forever! fell all over themselves denying any involvement. Which was why Fred had to bow out – ‘It just wouldn't look right,' he said. ‘I hope you understand.'

All right, so Fred was a coward, like the rest of them. But he was there the first day to bail Tierwater out and, along with Andrea, to creatively restructure the Tierwater holdings, both in real property and in the mutual–fund investments into which the shopping–center profits had
gone. It was like this: Fred had foreseen the judgment and already had the instrument in hand that would shift all Tierwater's assets to the Earth Forever! Preservation Trust, under his wife's name and control. ‘Before the court gets it,' Fred reasoned, pacing back and forth across the living–room carpet of the rented house in Tarzana, the frogs croaking and birds singing obliviously in the trees Tierwater wouldn't be seeing again for some time to come. ‘Or GE. You don't want to see GE get everything you have, do you?'

Tierwater was in a state of shock. He held himself rigid against the smudged neck–brace and bent awkwardly to sign the papers. And Andrea, as prearranged, filed for divorce. ‘Yes, I'm pissed off,' she said, ‘of course I am, and disappointed and hurt too – I can't begin to tell you the harm you've done, Ty, and not just to me and Sierra, but to the whole organization. You're so goddamned mindless and stupid it just astonishes me' – a shadow swept by the window on swift wings, Sierra sat white–faced on the couch, her knees drawn up to her chin, Fred stood by – ‘but I'm not deserting you, though no one would blame me if I did. This is just a maneuver, don't you see? We're hiding your assets and hoping the other side won't find out you have anything more than a closet full of old camping equipment, a beat–up Jeep and a rental house. If you don't have anything, what can they take?'

(Speeches. I heard one after the other, everybody so practical, so reasonable, but what it amounted to was the fleecing of Ty Tierwater, once and forever, my father's last hard–earned dollars poured down the funnel and into the money–hungry gullet of Earth Forever!, the incorporated earth–savers, Rallies R Us, rah–rah–rah. Andrea and I never did remarry, although she was therefor me, nominally at least, when I got out. Do I sound bitter? I am. Or I was. But none of it matters anymore, not really.)

So Tierwater, officially penniless, shackled at the ankles and handcuffed at the wrists, took a bus ride to the state prison at Calpatria, a big stark factory of a place in the blasted scrubby hills of the Mohave Desert. What can he say about that place? It was no camp, that was for sure. Forget the tennis courts, the strolls round the yard, the dormitory. It was cellblock time. A lockup for the discerning criminal, no amateurs here. Your cell consisted of a metal–frame bunk, a lidless steel toilet, two metal counters with attached swing–out stools, a sink, a single overhead lightbulb and a sheet of polished metal bolted into the wall for a mirror. The guards didn't like to be called guards – they were ‘correctional officers' – and they called everybody else ‘shitbird,' regardless of race or crime or
attitude. What else? The cuisine was shit. The work was shit. Your fellow inmates were shit. You got drunk on a kind of rancid thin liquid made from bread, oranges, water and sugar fermented for four days in a plastic bag hidden in the back of your locker. Drugs came in in the vaginas of girlfriends and wives, tucked into condoms that made it from the female mouth to the male during that first long lingering kiss of greeting. Tierwater didn't do drugs. And he didn't have a girlfriend. His wife – or ex–wife – visited him once a month if he was lucky. And his daughter – to her eyes, and hers alone, he was still a hero – tried to come when she could, but she was in college now, and she had papers to write, exams to take, rallies to attend, protests to organize, animals to liberate. She wrote him every week, long discursive letters on the Gaia hypothesis, rock and roll, fossil love and her roommate's hygienic habits. Once in a while she'd take the bus down to Calpatria and surprise him.

(Sample conversation, Tierwater and his daughter, the table between them, the shriek and gibber of two dozen voices, Fat Frank, the puffed–up guard, looming over them like an avalanche about to happen.

Sierra: Yeah, well, chickens have rights too. They do. It's just species chauvinism is what it is.

Tierwater: What what is?

Sierra: Saying they're just dumb animals as a rationale for penning them up in a space the size of a shoebox for their whole lives, with a what–do–you–call–it – a conveyor belt – underneath it to carry off their waste. Well, they used to say the same thing a hundred and fifty years ago about African Americans.

Tierwater: I'm not following you – you want to liberate the chickens and deep–fry African Americans, is that it?

Sierra:
Dad.)

Then there was Sandman. Sandman – Geoffrey R. Sandman, the ‘R.' signifying nothing, but giving the extra bit of heft to a name that had to look good at the bottom of a bad check – was Tierwater's cellmate during the better part of the thirty–eight months of the state sentence he wound up serving. It was Sandman who kept him sane (if ‘sane' was an accurate description, and there were plenty who would debate that), and kept him safe too. Sandman was in for armed robbery – he'd taken down a Brinks guard coming out of the neighborhood Safeway with the day's receipts, then shot the man at the wheel in both feet when he stepped out to come to his partner's aid, and on top of that he wound up stealing the armored car for a glorious two–hour chase on the 605 Freeway – and he was a
force to be reckoned with. He was tall, six three or four, and he put in his time in the weight room. Tierwater's reputation had preceded him – the Johnny Taradash incident, a few other minor but indicative things at Lompoc and the sheer craziness of the nude stunt and trying to take out General Electric – and that gave him at least some initial respect on the cellblock. Together, they formed a gang of two.

They were sitting in the cell one night, half an hour before lockdown, playing take–no–prisoners chess for five–dollar chits (Tierwater already owed his cellmate something like three hundred and twenty dollars at that point) and sharing the last of a pack of Camels (a nasty habit, sure, but what else were you going to do in prison?). There were the usual sounds, the jabbering, the cursing, the rucking up of clots of phlegm, the persistent
tuh–tuh
of sunflower seeds spat into a fist or a cup. The usual smells too, the body reek of caged animals, of vomit, urine and disinfectant, cut by the sweet cherry perfume of pipe tobacco or the scent of beer nuts or a freshly cracked bag of salt–and–vinegar potato chips. From the radio that hung from the bars in the exact spot where the reception was best came the low thump of bass and the high breathy wheeze of Maclovio Pulchris rendering the ineluctable lyrics of his latest hit:
I want you, I want you, I want you, / Ooo, baby, ooo, baby, ooo!

‘Christ, I hate that shit,' Sandman said, maneuvering his bishop in for the kill – he still had better than half his pieces on the board; Tierwater was down to his king, an embattled queen and two pawns. ‘Every time he opens his mouth he sounds like he's pissing down his leg.'

‘I don't know,' Tierwater said, ‘I kind of like it.'

Sandman gave him a look of incredulity – what he liked to call his ‘tomcat–sniffing–a–new–asshole look' – but he let it drop right there. He had the most malleable face Tierwater had ever seen, and he used it to his advantage, acting, always acting, but ready to underscore any performance with a ready brutal violence that was no act at all. When Tierwater first met him, Sandman was thirty–two, his face tanned from the yard, with a pair of casual blue eyes and a beard so carefully clipped it was like a shadow tracing the line of his jaw and underscoring the thrust of his chin. He was handsome, as handsome as the kind of actor who specializes in the role of the wisecracking world–beater and gets paid for it, and he used his looks to his advantage. People instinctively liked him. And he used their prejudices – no bad guy could look like that, they thought, certainly no con – and turned them upside down. ‘I spent years looking into the mirror,' he'd told Tierwater, ‘till I got every look down, from “don't fuck
with me” to “holy reverend taking the collection” to “would you please put the money in the paper sack before I remove your fucking face.”'

‘The lyrics might be a little weak,' Tierwater admitted, ‘but with Pulchris it's the beat, that's what it's all about.'

Sandman waved a hand in extenuation, then swooped in on the board to replace Tierwater's queen with a black rook that seemed to come out of nowhere. ‘Hah, got her, the bitch!'

‘Shit. I didn't even see it.'

‘Ready to concede? And by the way, speaking of bitches, how's your ex doing?' He leaned forward to collect the pieces. ‘I mean, I saw you all tangled up with her there this afternoon, and you didn't look too happy – '

‘What about your own bitch of an ex–wife?' Tierwater just sat there, trading grins with him. Andrea was a subject he didn't want to talk about. Or think about. It was like thinking about water when you're out on the desert, or pizza when you're in South Dakota.

‘I ever tell you I've been married five times?' Sandman was leaning forward, grinning, the heavy muscles of his upper arms bunched under the thin fabric of his T–shirt. ‘Five times, and I'm only still a child yet. But the first one, Candy, Candy Martinez, she was my high–school sweetheart? – she was the worst. Soon as I went up the first time, she turned around and fucked everybody I ever knew, as if it was an assignment or something – I mean, my brother, my best bud, the guy across the street, even the shop teacher, for shit's sake, and he must've been forty, at least, with like those gorilla hands with the black hairs all over them – ‘

Tierwater pushed himself up off the bunk, took two paces right, two paces left – the cell was fifty–one square feet, total, so it was no parade ground. He just needed to shake out his legs, that was all. ‘Thanks, Sandman,' he said, working up his best mock–sincere voice, ‘thanks for sharing that with me. I feel a lot better now.'

Prison. Tierwater endured it, and there's not much more to be said about it. Every day he regretted going out there with that torch, but the regret made him harder, and he would have done it again without thinking twice about it – only, of course, as in all fantasies and theoretical models, he wouldn't get caught this time. He wound up serving the better part of his sentence, a block of good days (good–behavior days, that is, two days' credit for every day served in state) subtracted from his record because of an unfortunate incident with two child–sized members of a
Vietnamese gang in the prison mess hall, and then he went back to Lompoc, minimum security again, because he wasn't going anywhere with six months left to serve.