All Over Creation (39 page)

He watched the frown gather once more in that wide-open space between her brows, but this time he didn't touch it or try to smooth it out. He couldn't protect her from himself, he realized, without giving her up entirely, and although he wasn't sure, he suspected that might have been his big mistake in the first place.

The following day, on the flight out of Pocatello, he watched the relentless geometries of the agricultural landscape recede below. It was beautiful, in a bleak, flattened sort of way. The farmers had been worried about the winds, but that didn't concern him. Weather was an act of God, whose crisis management was outside his jurisdiction. He pulled out his laptop. The report on the Promotions Council was easy, but the rest of the week was looking pretty thin. He wrote up a brief history of the Seeds of Resistance and described the in-depth interrogations of their landlady that took place at the Falls Motel, noting that Ms. Fuller had agreed to supply intelligence regarding the Seeds' movements and activities. He read over the report. It sounded okay, but he realized he was going to have to come up with something better if he wanted to get back to Idaho anytime soon.

The letter came in the mail a few weeks after Elliot left. It was addressed in crude, childish block letters to THE FULLERS, with no return address. Ocean opened it. She had collected the mail from the box and had asked permission first. Of course I said yes. I thought it was from one of her school friends. I was washing dishes at the sink when she asked,

“What's a hoormunger?”

“What?”

She sounded it out. “That's what it says. Har-lits and hoor-mungers.”

Phoenix was looking for milk in the refrigerator. He closed the door and snatched the letter away from her.

“Phoenix, give me that!” I said, grabbing for it with soapy hands, but he twisted away, and, keeping just out of reach, he continued to read. His ears turned dark red. He looked up. There was such hate in his eyes.

“It's for you.” He thrust the letter at me, pushing roughly past as he headed out the door. His feet clattered down the porch steps.

I read the letter.
Harlots and Whoremongers, Thus saith the Lord God . . .

“Let me see it!” Ocean whined. “I want to read it, too.”

I ripped it in half and then in half again.

“I wasn't finished!”

“You don't need to see it. It's filth.”
Because thy filthiness was poured out and thy nakedness discovered. . . .

She was furious. She jumped up and down, stamped her feet, then tore out of the house after Phoenix. Poor Ocean. She hated being left out of anything.

There were pockets of air where I thought there had been earth. There were vacuums and sudden inversions. I threw the letter in the garbage, then sat down at the kitchen table. My hands were shaking and felt unclean. I got up to wash them, holding them under the scalding water until the skin turned red and I couldn't stand it anymore. I poured a shot of whiskey to keep from being sick, then fished the bits of letter out of the garbage and went after the kids. Geek, I thought.
I shall bring up a company against thee. . . .

I cut across the garden to the greenhouse. He was inside working on transplants, but he stopped as soon as I came in.

“Where's Phoenix?”

Geek shook his head. “Not here.” He watched me as I scanned the greenhouse, looking into the corners. “No one's here, Yumi. What's wrong?”

I walked over to the potting table and laid out the pieces of the letter on the gritty surface. Geek scanned it quickly.

“The kids read it,” I said. “They're freaked out. So am I.
‘Stone thee with stones? Thrust thee through with swords? Burn thine houses with fire?'
It's horrible. Who would send something like this?”

“What makes you think it's directed at you?”

“
‘And I will cause thee to cease from playing the harlot. . . .'
Who else could it be?”

“Could be someone else. Or no one . . .”

“Phoenix didn't think so. He handed it right to me.” My voice tightened. “He's furious. I thought he'd calm down after Elliot left, but this letter just set him off again. Maybe it's someone from Lloyd's church. Someone who knew . . .”

Geek brushed the flecks of dirt from his hands. “What's with you and this guy Elliot?”

“He's an old friend. I knew him when I was a kid. He's a reporter.”

“An old boyfriend?”

He'd been standoffish ever since Elliot showed up and I'd stopped hanging out in the greenhouse. I hadn't told him much, but now I sensed he knew more than he was letting on. “Phoenix said something, right?”

Geek didn't answer.

“Well, Phoenix doesn't know everything. Elliot taught history at my school. He was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War.”

Geek choked. “A conscientious objector? You're joking, right?”

“Well, that's what he told us back then. Of course, I didn't know him all that well. . . .”

I heard a noise and looked up. Phoenix was standing outside the doorway. Ocean crouched behind him.

“Bullshit,” Phoenix muttered, kicking the earth.

I raised my voice. “If you're going to swear at me, Phoenix, speak up.”

“Bullshit!” he yelled into the greenhouse. He turned to Geek. “She knew him real well. Five minutes after he got here, he had his tongue down her throat.”

“Phoenix,” I said, “this is so none of your business.”

“Yeah? Well what about Barney?”

“Who's Barney?” Geek asked.

“This guy I was seeing back in Hawaii,” I said. “It wasn't serious.”

“He's Poo's dad,” Phoenix said. “He lives with us.”

“He was staying with us. It's temporary.”

The look in my son's eye was cool and bitter. “That's what you say about all of our fathers.” He gave the dirt one last vicious kick, then gripped Ocean's hand and jerked her away.

“Phoenix!” I followed him to the doorway. “That's not fair!”

They kept going, cutting through the garden, skirting the freshly dug beds. Ocean twisted around to look back, but Phoenix kept tight hold of her, and she had to turn and trot to keep up. Bobbing and stumbling. I didn't go after them. I didn't know what to say. I just stood in the empty doorway.

“Damn.” I didn't want to cry, not in front of Geek, but he had come up behind me, and now he saw the tears and touched my face. Specks of soil still clung to his fingers, and I could feel the grit on his fingertips.

“Come here,” he said, leading me back inside. He wrapped his arms around me, pressing my head against his chest and stroking my hair. I could feel his heart thump under his rib cage.

“Nothing I do is right,” I said. “I try . . .”

“You try,” he echoed. “You do your best.”

“No,” I said. “I knew better. Elliot was always bad news. But I've got such lousy luck with men.”

“He's a creep,” he agreed. “All men are creeps.”

“Yeah,” I said, then laughed. “I'm glad you're here.”

He didn't reply, which seemed okay at first. We stood there while he kneaded the tension out of my neck, but something was hanging in the thick greenhouse air.

“Yumi,” he said finally. “I know this is bad timing. . . .”

I felt my spine stiffen. “What?”

“Well, it's just that we're thinking of heading down to San Francisco for a bit.”

I pushed him away. “Why? You promised to stay!”

“It's complicated,” he said. “It's just for a little while.” His arms hung by his sides. “I think it's better this way.”

“Oh, really?” I said, feeling nasty now. “And why is that?”

Geek examined the edge of the potting table. “That letter. It isn't about you. It's about us.”

I stared at him, not understanding. “You're the harlot?”

“Actually, I think Lilith is the harlot. I'm more of the whoremonger type. Listen, you better sit down.”

I leaned against the potting table, and he started to explain about the Web site and Lilith's acts, how it financed their operations. “It's not pornography, really,” he said. “It's really kind of sweet and funny what she does, but I can see how some people might find it offensive. . . .”

I dug around in my pockets for a cigarette. I found a crushed pack and lit up. Geek didn't like me smoking in the greenhouse, but he didn't say anything this time. I took a deep drag and exhaled. Nicotine always provided an answer of sorts. I was calm now, conversational even.

“And you've been running this little peep show from here? From my parents' house?”

“Well, no. I mean we did some taping here, but we were doing the uploads from the public library.”

“And you think someone in town found out.”

“That's what we figure. We got a couple of these letters, too. The postmarks are all local. We thought it might be a good idea to split for a while and kind of let things cool down.”

“So this whole business is about you.” I glanced down. There was a flyer sitting on the potting table, some treatise on global seed politics. “I heard about the action you did in Pocatello last week.”

He didn't ask me how I knew. He just nodded. “Sorry about that.”

“So why San Francisco?”

He paused. Maybe he was trying to decide how much more to tell me. “There's a big protest going down, and a man's going to get pied. We got called on to help.”

“Pied?”

“Pie in the face. It's the CEO of a biotech corporation. He's speaking at a forum on the future of the world.” Geek took off his glasses and wiped his lenses on his T-shirt. “I know it sounds kind of silly. . . .”

I thought about Elliot. I wondered if he'd be interested in pies.

“They're going to use tofu crème,” Geek added.

“Tofu crème?”

“For the pie. You know, tofu? From genetically modified soybeans?”

“Oh.” It was ridiculous. Suddenly I was furious. “Well, this is just fucking great! You break all your promises, run a porno racket from our driveway, and get us targeted by some religious freak, and now you split to go throw pies?”

“Yumi, we don't want to get you and the kids involved—”

“We
are
involved! I was counting on you. How the hell am I going to take care of Lloyd and Momoko and the kids, never mind all this?” I looked around at the benches that surrounded us, covered with flats of sprouting seedlings. My anger drained, and now I just felt exhausted.

Geek took a deep breath. “You'll be fine.” He removed the cigarette from my hand and stepped on it, then led me toward the flats. The seedlings were organized into families: the Legumes, the Cucurbits, and the Umbelliferae. Some were no more than a green gauzy haze, like algae dusting the earth. Others were more robust, an inch or two in height. “They have to be watched,” Geek said. “But Momoko's fine with stuff like this.”

“I should have left weeks ago, when I had the chance.”

“We'll be back,” he said. “After things cool down a little.”

I wandered down the row and lingered at the back. I fingered the feathery top of a small Peruvian carrot. “Maybe you better not.”

“Okay.” He looked crestfallen, standing by a tray of buttercup squash, next to the bitter melons. “Listen,” he said. “I'm really sorry. . . .”

“Yeah, well, I'm sorry, too,” I said, picking up a flat. The little transplants had their first true leaves. “I'm sorry you had to flake out on me. Are these ready to go?”

Geek nodded.

I looked down at the spindly shoots, grown from Momoko's seed.
Cucurbita pepo.
Warted gourds. I carried them out into the sun to harden.