Lydia (11 page)

Lydia was quoted as saying, “I will flee no more forever.”

Her article in
Harper’s Bazaar
was entitled “Ageism in the Feminist Movement.” It was written in response to the new president of NOW, who’d called Lydia a
fringe dinosaur
. The FBI got hold of the magazine and gave it some high-tech radium bath, followed it through four safe mailboxes, and was waiting when Lydia arrived at the post office on that March morning of 1990.

Most of Lydia’s family, and that included me, Maurey, and Shannon, believed quite firmly that if Lydia had kept her mouth shut, the FBI and Secret Service would not have even been looking for her. But she made herself such a high-profile fugitive that they had to track her down and prosecute. It wasn’t just
Harper’s
. Lydia wrote scores of “Nonnie, nonnie, can’t-catch-me” articles. She wrote so many letters to the editor that they were collected into a book called
Notes from the Underground
.
It wasn’t a bestseller, but every review used the term
cult following
. Lydia always did want a cult following.

***

Gilia answered the phone on the third ring. She held the receiver so Esther could hear the conversation, but Esther was more interested in eating an earring.

Gilia said, “What?”

She listened a few moments and became just distracted enough for Esther to hook a finger in the earring and pull. “Ouch!” Gilia yelped. She said into the phone, “No, not you. My ear.”

She listened a few more moments, then hung up.

She found me in the library with Eden Rae and Honor, where we were going over Eden’s release documents. I was explaining blind adoptions.

“These papers say I can’t tell you where the baby goes, and when he or she gets old enough to come looking, I can’t tell him or her who you are.”

Eden didn’t comment. The process depressed her no end.

“Of course,” I went on, “laws change. What’s right and legal now may not be right and legal in twenty years. There’s always the chance of this child showing up on your door, so I would advise against keeping secrets from your future husband.”

Eden said, “Future husband, my ass.”

Gilia interrupted from the doorway. “The sheriff called. Your mother trashed Zion Hardware.”

I looked up from the papers. “Trashed?”

“Mangum says a bomb would have been more delicate.”

“Jesus,” Eden said. “You come from a violent family.”

Gilia said, “He wants you down there right away. Says he’ll have to stun gun her if she doesn’t mellow out.”

Rather than bolting down to the sheriff’s office to save my mom from the stun gun, I made a side trip to Zion Hardware, in hopes of saving her from far worse. Owen Mohr and I discussed inventory and Levi’s long-term trauma. Owen inflated prices a bit, but considering the state of his store, he was decent about the matter; Owen took pride in being a good businessman, not a gouger. He arrived at a number, I wrote a check, and we shook hands, all without lawyers. Things like that still happen in small towns.

I found Lydia in the women’s holding cell. She sat folded on the floor with her back against the wall, her knees up under her chin and her arms around her legs. Brandy Epstein was lowering the parole-officer boom. “I hope you enjoyed your little tantrum, Mrs. Elkrunner, because it is going to cost you two years.”

Lydia had shut down. She gave no sign of knowing where she was, much less who was talking and what was being threatened. She had disappeared into the zone known only by those who have served time. Her face was gone.

Brandy turned on me. “I have to revoke her.”

I said, “Owen Mohr isn’t pressing charges.”

Brandy stared hard at me for longer than I was comfortable being stared at by a parole officer. “How much did it cost you?”

I met her eyes straight on. “Eleven thousand.”

She blinked. She turned back to look down at Lydia on the floor. Lydia gave no indication she had heard the exchange.

“Okay,” Brandy said, “but the party segment of our relationship is over. I want her in my office every Monday, eight a.m. If she’s two minutes late, she goes on report.”

“She’ll be there.”

“And no more goldbricking the community service. She owes me five hundred hours, and so far she’s given me four. From now on, if that old man craps, I want her there to change his diaper.”

“Why are you taking this so personally?” I asked. “She made a mistake. The only one she’s hurting is herself.”

Brandy walked over to Lydia and stood closer than she should have. “Too many kids come through my office who can’t buy their way out of trouble. It pisses me off when someone can.”

Brandy walked out of the cell. I crossed over and touched Lydia’s shoulder. “Let’s go home, Mom.”

Maurey Pierce lay on her belly with her right eye screwed up against the spotting scope. Beside her, on the blanket, she had arranged a pair of Bausch & Lomb binoculars, a Peterson’s
Field Guide to Western Birds
,
and a silver thermos of black coffee.

She spoke slowly, scanning a marshy pond at the bottom of the slope. “Cinnamon teal, a ring-necked, a couple types of goldeneyes. There’s a heron in that aspen by the inlet.”

Roger tugged his bandanna low over his eyebrows. “Busy little pond.”

“Springtime in the Rockies.” Maurey cupped her left hand over her left eye, trying to ease the squint pressure. “We had a pair of trumpeters nest in here last year. I was hoping they’d come back.” She swiveled the scope to the right. “There’s a coyote on the ridge.”

“Where?”

Maurey pointed out what looked to Roger like a tan rock. He picked up the binoculars and focused in on the coyote.

Maurey said, “Every female down there is either about to or has dropped in the last few days. In the wild, copulation stops once the female gets pregnant.”

“I didn’t know copulation stops.”

“There’s no point if she’s already knocked up.” She glanced over to see if Roger caught the drift, but he was busy pulling a book from his day pack.

He said, “You ever read this?”

Maurey checked out the cover. “I tried once. The man wrote it used to live on Ditch Creek.”

“Did you know him?”

Maurey returned her attention to the spotting scope. “I pulled him out of a snowbank when he got stuck. As I recall, he wasn’t much of a winter driver.”

“What’d you think of the book?”

“Jesus, what is that in the reeds? All these female ducks look the same.” She adjusted the focus again. “It was one of those books spends three hundred pages making you love a person, then the writer kills him and you’re supposed to cry and think the book was wonderful. I saw where it was headed and bailed out.”

“The baby disappears in the end. He doesn’t die.”

“His mama does. Sam told me the ending. He thinks this Loren Paul was hot stuff before he went off to Hollywood. Sam took it as a personal insult the guy would rather be rich than sensitive.”

Roger unscrewed the thermos and poured an inch of coffee into the lid. “Lydia thinks the book is about me.”

Maurey kind of froze in position, like she was holding her breath, even though she wasn’t.

“She thinks I’m the kid—Buggie or Fred or whatever his name is.”

Maurey turned her head toward Roger. He sipped coffee, not looking at her, pretending to be casual. Maurey said, “Did Lydia explain why she thinks you’re a boy in a novel?”

“She says it’s a memoir, which is a novel, only true. And she thinks the pieces fit, so it could be me.” Roger sneaked a look at Maurey. She seemed okay, not threatened or anything. If his more or less adoptive son was nosing around for birth parents, it would make him nervous, but Maurey seemed untroubled. “Tell me about the woman who brought me to the ranch.”

Maurey took the thermos lid from Roger, drained the coffee, then gave him back the lid. “I met Mary Beth in Amarillo, a long time ago. She was living in a hippie commune in Oklahoma, with a drug-abusing hard dick called himself Freedom.”

Roger returned his attention to the coyote. “There’s a drug-abusing hard dick in the book called Freedom.”

“Maybe every drug abuser silly enough to name himself Freedom was a hard dick back then.”

As Roger watched, the coyote arched its back and leaped—like a ballerina—and came up with a ground squirrel in its teeth. The coyote swallowed the ground squirrel in one mighty gulp.

Maurey dropped back into the prone spotting scope position. “All those commune kids had silly nicknames. Mary Beth was Critter. Freedom had a son whose name was Brad, but they called him Hawk, if you can believe that. The minute he got off the commune, the kid changed back to Brad.”

“The Freedom in the book was Ann’s boyfriend, before she got pregnant. He’s only mentioned in a couple of paragraphs.”

“And Ann is?”

“Buggie’s mother. Buggie’s father was killed in the hospital parking lot the day Buggie was born, and Lydia’s theory is that Freedom did it. Then, five years later, Buggie disappeared from a campground on Jackson Lake. Freedom could have snatched him, and if it’s the same Freedom, Mary Beth might have ended up with the boy.”

“You got a lot of big ifs there, son.” Maurey studied Roger to see how much he wanted to believe the idea. He seemed dead serious, but then, Roger always had seemed dead serious. “Mary Beth told me Freedom got himself killed in a drug deal, and a couple of his friends dumped you on her. She was working in a dental office in Boulder and just getting out of all that hippie jive, and she was too poor to keep you herself. I was taking in an assortment of lost souls back then, so she drove you up.”

Maurey pulled herself to her knees She resented like hell the old age
push
it took to get her off the ground. “You had a little suitcase about the size of an overnight bag, and in the bottom was a picture postcard of the Tetons. I think that’s why she first thought of me.”

Maurey stood. “Let’s go over by the springs. I need to check on an American redstart Pud swears is nesting in a willow patch.”

Roger shook out the blanket. “Lydia says I have to track down the author. She says I have a responsibility to discover what happened during the missing years.”

Maurey unscrewed the scope off its tripod. “What do you think?”

“I think she’s a nosy bitch. What good can come from me knowing stuff that had to be so lousy I stopped talking?”

Maurey stalled for time by writing the date and place next to the drawing of a ring-necked duck in her Petersen’s Field Guide.
Ring-necked ducks have a ring on their bill. She’d never understood why they weren’t called ring bills instead of ring necks, but even more important, this seemed one of those moments when she was supposed to come through like family. Maurey had always known Roger would go searching for his past someday. Her maternal instincts cried out for her to protect the boy, but she knew from bitter experience that once the kids are out of high school maternal instincts are often wrong.

“You remember that time when you and Auburn got into a fight in the school cafeteria?”

“That was no fight. Auburn punched me out and left me lying on the linoleum floor.”

“Do you know why he hit you?”

“One of those jock friends of his was calling me a pussy, and when I wouldn’t stand up to the jerk, Auburn pushed his friend out of the way and hit me in the face. I guess he was embarrassed to have a brother who was chicken.”

“I talked to Auburn that night, and he didn’t think you were chicken. It was the opposite.”

Roger snorted a laugh. “He didn’t punch me for being brave.”

“He said you showed nothing. No fear. No shame. You weren’t even angry. He couldn’t stand it that you could be called a pussy in front of the whole school and not feel anything.”

Roger tried to remember what he had felt. In times of attack, his automatic reflex was withdrawal. Something inside would shrivel into a hard little ball surrounded by a cushion of not caring. The Tar Baby syndrome.

Maurey went on. “Auburn said he wanted you to feel something, even if it was only blood in your nose.”

Maurey reached across and touched Roger’s arm. “What I’m saying is, it’s not healthy for a boy your age to hide in a cabin off by himself, insulated from any possibility of pain. Feelings have to be exercised, like muscles, or they rot.”

“I feel.” Roger carefully wrapped the blanket around the coffee thermos and placed them both in his leather day pack. “Sometimes.”

“It’s your decision. Do what you want, but I think if there’s any chance this writer is your stepfather, and he can tell you what happened to make you like this, it might be a good idea to hear what he has to say.”

“You think so?”

“You started talking again, Roger. Now it’s time to wake up.”

***

Lydia telephoned the federal penitentiary outside Lompoc, California.

Hello, to whom am I speaking? Ivan Belle, I need to speak to a client there…an inmate…His name is Hank Elkrunner, he’s located in minimum security, and I am certain you will have no trouble locating him…I am his wife, Lydia Elkrunner…Yes, Ivan, I know visiting hours start at 8:30 a.m. every day but Tuesday and Wednesday; the problem is, I’m in Wyoming and unable to come to California at this time, and I really, really need to talk to Hank…It’s an emergency…I am quite aware of that, but those rules are meant for real criminals; Hank couldn’t hurt a kitten. He never even broke a law that I am aware of until he helped me evade persecution, and I don’t see how you can condemn a man for defending his wife…Look at it this way. If a close family member had died, would you bring him to the phone?…No, I don’t want you to tell Hank a close family member has died, I’m simply trying to ascertain the depth of emergency that would motivate you to behave like a human being…No, Ivan, nobody died. Do not tell Hank somebody died. Just go get him and bring him to the telephone…I hear you, Ivan, your lot in life must be difficult, being a bureaucrat who doesn’t make the rules but only enforces them…Exercise your imagination and feel what I am feeling. Can’t you drum up an iota of compassion…I need to talk to Hank! Don’t give me that policy bullshit—you could bring him to the phone if you wanted to. You could if you had an ounce of decency. Ivan, don’t hang up on me, you motherfucking slime sucker!

Lydia smacked the telephone against the table edge with such force that the earpiece broke off and flew across the room.

***

Eden Rae’s water broke while she was changing Willa Potter’s colostomy bag. There was a sound, like a puppy sigh, that either came from her or Willa, then liquid running down her thighs.

Willa held the bed rail with both hands and peeked over at the mix of water, mucous, and streaks of blood spreading across the tile. “Did I do that?”

“No, Mrs. Potter. It came out of me.”

Willa stared hard at the floor. “You better go find your people.”

“I don’t have any people.”

Willa watched Eden’s hands pull away the soiled plastic bag. The hands moved quickly, stripping the tubes, replacing the bag gasket, taping the tube to Willa’s leg. Willa thought Eden had the hands of a child.

“You better let me be, and go find the folks you’re staying with. They’ll know what to do. They’ve seen this before.”

“You think it could happen right now, any second?”

“Not any second. You have some time yet.”

“How long do I have? There’s things I wanted to do before it came.”

Willa let go of her hold on the rail and settled back onto the bed. “I’ve had six and lost one,” she said, “and each one was different, but my guess is you ought to settle in where you’re going to be sometime soon.”

The wall-mount TV came on suddenly, loud, showing a man who could clean gravy stains out of trousers. The man shouted, “
Have you ever seen anything this amazing!
”
and the studio audience cheered like he’d scored a touchdown.

“Raise up,” Eden said.

Willa arched as high as she could while Eden felt under her back until she located the TV remote control jammed against Willa’s bony shoulder blade. She pushed the Off button, and the man disappeared.

She said, “I’m sorry. About the one you lost.”

Willa said, “Me too.” With her right hand, Willa cradled the cool plastic bag against her thigh, while Eden coiled the spare tubing and Zip-locked away the old bag. As she turned to leave the room, Willa raised her head and said, “You find you some people.”

***

Eden trickled water down the hall to the duty station, where she told Penny, the night nurse, she had to go home. She didn’t say why, and Penny didn’t ask. Penny had all the stress she could endure taking care of geriatric invalids; she didn’t want anyone’s problems she wasn’t being paid to deal with.

She said, “Make sure you clock out.”

***

Pink light soaked in from the east as Eden Rae walked across the parking lot and unlocked the Madonnaville van. A silver moon sliver hung over the chairlift docking tower on the mountain south of town. Pine siskins and finches took defensive positions on bird feeders over by the fake Japanese garden, with its handicapped-access pathways. Even though it had been explained to her over and over, Eden had no idea what was happening in her body. She’d never paid attention to the details, which meant the first contraction, coming as she drove past the airport turnoff, scared the beJesus out of her. The second, ten miles and fifteen minutes later, was quicker, sharper, even more unbelievable. It made her hands jerk down, causing the steering wheel to twist, and both right tires dropped momentarily off the asphalt into loose gravel.

Gilia and I were asleep when Eden pried off her shoes in the doorway and slid into our bed. She lay between us, on top of the covers, holding her belly and staring at the ceiling, waiting.

Gilia’s eyes flickered. She rolled to her side and dropped her arm across what she thought were my shoulders, but knew immediately weren’t.

“Eden?”

Eden concentrated on her next breath. Nothing that came before or could come after mattered as much as her next breath.

“Is anything the matter?”

“No.”

Gilia propped on her elbows and looked down at the girl’s face. Across from her, I went from deep sleep to total alertness in a single heartbeat.

“Are you having the baby?” I asked.

“I think so.”

No matter how many births I’ve been in on, I hyperventilate. The thing is, I cannot fathom a person springing alive from between the legs of another person. The miracle floors me. Chemicals surge through my brain, and neurons fire like Fourth of July. Over the years, I have turned into a birth junkie. I need the buzz. The hyperventilation is so predictable that I keep a bag—originally designed for those throwing up on Delta Airlines—in the top drawer of my bureau.

I dived out of bed and ran for the bag.

“Have you had contractions?” Gilia asked.

Eden nodded.