All Over Creation (43 page)

He smiled, too. “You were mighty scared, all right. Shaking like a leaf.”

“Then we went inside, remember?”

“Saw that big old stalactite. That was quite some cavern. Went on for about three miles.”

“Someone explored the whole thing?”

“The farmer who was selling off his farm that day, he realized that old tube was on his property, so he held on to that bit and developed it into one of those roadside attractions. Opened it that same summer when the crazy fellow tried to jump over the canyon on his motorcycle. Made a bundle off all the thrill seekers who came to watch.”

“You're kidding?”

“Nope. Turned it into their retirement plan.” Lloyd raised his eyebrow. “Guess they owe you.”

“I had a talent for real estate even back then, huh?”

For a moment he just nodded, but in the end he couldn't let it pass. He shook his head. “Can't say I hold much store with real estate developers,” he said. “Buying up all the good farmland, turning it into malls and parking lots. Next crookedest thing to lawyers, if you ask me.”

But she hadn't asked, and now she turned her back on him and stared out the window while he waited, wishing he'd kept quiet after all.

“I think it's dry enough,” he said finally. “Let's finish up.”

She came back over and squatted in front of him, lining up the new flange around the stoma. She applied the adhesive and pressed it to his skin. She was wearing latex gloves, and when he looked down, he realized that her hands were trembling. Her head was bent, and she wouldn't look at him.

“How come we never talk about what happened?” she asked.

“What happened when?”

“When I left. When I ran away.”

He held his breath as she eased the new bag onto the flange, working from bottom to top. When she was done and the bag was in place, he breathed again.

“Oh, Yumi,” he said, “I just don't recall. It was so long ago.” He gave the bag a tug, to make sure it was on tight and wouldn't slip off. “Where's Melvin anyway? When are they coming back?”

She peeled off the latex gloves with a snap and dropped them in the trash. “They're not coming back,” she said. “You're stuck with me.”

Frisco was fucking awesome.

Frank had never seen anything like it. They crashed at an anarchist house in Oakland, a bad-ass scene with people cruising by and hanging out in the kitchen and camping on the floor. The Seeds knew everyone, and all these people were their friends. Frank was wary at first—he knew about group homes—but within minutes he felt welcome.

He was happy to be away from the fucking farm and hungry to check out the skate scene in the city, but just as he was about to take off, Geek handed him a spade and a garbage bag full of composted manure, and the next thing he knew, he was toting the shovel and the shit and a five-foot peach sapling through the dusky streets of Oakland. He followed the crew, dressed all in black, to a median strip in the middle of a busy road. They scoped the area for signs of the Man, and then the leader gave the word to dig. Frankie had gotten pretty good at digging and generally hated it, but this was different. Here, in the twilight, under the streetlights, with traffic moving by him in both directions, it was exciting. Quickly he broke the sod in a neat circle and excavated a three-foot hole, then gently lowered his peach tree into the center. He filled in the hole with soil and the compost he'd been packing, tamped it down, and mulched it. The leader looked at his work and nodded. “Right on, dude. You know your shit.”

Down the strip the rest of the crew was planting other trees: a pear, a persimmon, some nut trees, and a couple of figs. In a few years they'd be bearing fruit. Food for the people, the leader explained. They were liberating traffic strips and other public land sites across the city. As long as they were neat, the city workers never noticed. Mostly they just mowed right around the trees.

When the eight saplings were planted, the crew shouldered their shovels, and the timing was unreal, because a moment later the automated irrigation system on the median strip kicked in, and it was like a welcome-to-the-neighborhood party for the new transplants. The crew high-fived, then slipped into the shadows.

“We're hacking the landscape, dude,” they told Frankie. “Bringing back the commons. We are politically opposed to lawns.”

They had torn up the lawn in front of their house and planted a vegetable garden. They kept bees in the backyard. They reclaimed straw bales from the racetrack to use as mulch and ran bicycle posses across the city to tend the vegetable gardens they'd planted in the yards of elderly neighbors.

They did puppet shows for kids. Planted butterfly gardens.

They hacked the plumbing of the house, rerouting the runoff from the showers and the sink into filtration ponds in the garden. They grew water lilies and bulrushes. Willows and water chestnuts. They wanted to farm edible catfish one of these days, but for now they were raising huge ornamental carp for the Chinese market.

Golden Luckies.

Two-toned Prosperities.

They made seed bombs to lob over barbed-wire fences onto the tightly cropped lawns of military installations and corporate headquarters. Packed with the seeds of native flowers, the bombs would take root and grow. Little clumps of vegetative anarchy.

This was agriculture that Frankie could get his head around. Guerrilla gardening. Defiance farming. Radical acts of cultivation. “Dudes,” Frankie said, pacing up and down the Spudnik one night, “this shit is awesome! How come you're not part of this scene?”

Y smiled. “We are. We started this house.”

Frankie stopped short. “So how come you left, then?”

“Time to move on,” Geek said, rubbing his glasses. “We're a network of cells, Frankie. We're part of the underground. There are houses like this in cities and towns all across the country. The Spudnik's one of the links, keeping people connected, you know? Keeping information and energy flowing, but most of all working on outreach. It's all about dissemination, Frankie.”

“Dissemination?”

“We're like a seed bomb, dude.”

 

 

It wasn't Geek who threw the tofu crème pie at the CEO of Cynaco. Geek and Y both had police records, having been busted on a number of occasions for disorderly conduct, demonstrating without a permit, and various degrees of assault. It was more trouble than it was worth, getting them out of jail in Frisco, so they'd retired and now just ran backup.

“I propose the honor go to Frankie,” said Geek. “He's from out of town, and he's got a clean record here. Plus he's still a juvenile.”

The commander in charge of the pie operation looked skeptical. “He's a novice,” she pointed out. “You think he's experienced enough to pull it off?”

“Totally,” said Y. “He's cool and fearless. We've done some gnarly actions with him before.”

They were sitting in the kitchen of the Oakland house. The commander was cutting butter into a large bowl of pastry crust. She pushed the hair off her forehead with the back of her hand, leaving behind a dusting of flour on her eyebrow. Next to her, Charmey was mashing silken tofu.

“Et tu, Charmey?”
the commander asked.
“Qu'est-ce que tu penses? Il est très jeune, n'est-ce pas?”

“
Oui, d'accord,
” Charmey said. “He is young maybe, but his timing is
superbe.
”

So Frankie was elected to be one of three pie bearers, each belonging to a faction of the Pastry Platoon, which was a detachment of Operation Dessert Storm, launched by the International Food Liberation Army. On the day of the action he was dressed in the bottom half of Mr. Potato Head's heavy burlap costume, hiding behind a large potted palm in the hotel lobby. The top half of Mr. Potato Head was on the floor by his feet. Charmey and Lilith, acting as field agents, were standing by with a walkie-talkie, the pies, and Frankie's skateboard.

The walkie-talkie crackled out the intelligence from the commander: The keynote had ended; the target was on the move. Charmey stepped forward to initiate the action. She was dressed in pink maternity clothes and was pushing a baby stroller, all of which they'd bought at the Salvation Army earlier that week. In the stroller was a backup pie. She headed in a wide arc around the perimeter of the lobby, circling the oncoming CEO, who was crossing the marble foyer surrounded by his posse of bodyguards and underlings.

A flanking guard of hecklers, mingling with journalists and the press, closed in from the direction of the elevators. The hecklers initiated destabilization tactics.

“Sir! How do you justify your claims that genetically altered crops do not need labels because they are safe, when there's no research or evidence to support this?”

“Could you comment on the revolving-door relationship between Cynaco and the FDA, and the fact that so many of your former lobbyists have ended up in key positions in government regulatory agencies?”

“Is it Cynaco's long-term policy to mine Third World genetic resources, engage in globalized biopiracy, and rob developing countries of their ability to produce food independently and sustainably?”

The walkie-talkie crackled again. Lilith dropped the skateboard and helped Frankie flip on the top half of Mr. Potato Head and fasten it down with Velcro. Mr. Potato Head had undergone some further modifications since the Pocatello action: He now had two bolts stuck in his neck and a badly stitched scar on his forehead. Lilith adjusted his tin skullcap and looked at her handiwork with satisfaction.

“Break a leg,” she whispered, and handed Frankie the pie.

His legs felt strangely naked in the green tights, but his feet were sure on the board. The marble under his wheels was as smooth as glass, and he pushed off and started to fly. He crouched low and headed straight for Charmey, who was facing him now, having rounded the target to make her approach from the opposite side. When she looked up and saw Frankie coming, she clutched her bulging stomach and let out a piercing cry.

“Ooooooh!
Mon bébé!
He is coming!”

Slowly she sank to the ground.

All heads turned toward her and away from Frankie. As the crowd swayed closer to check her out, a gap opened up, and he took it. He sailed in, staying low and light on his board, ducking and weaving. By the time the CEO saw him coming, Mr. Potato Head had achieved what was later judged to be perfect pie proximity. Frankie drew back his arm and let the pie fly. It achieved maximum impact, neither too high nor too low, hitting the CEO smack on the nose. The consistency of the tofu crème achieved maximum coverage, too, being neither too thick nor too runny. A volley of backup pies from splinter factions started to fly, including Charmey's, just before security closed in and rounded them up, hustling them quickly from the lobby.

Outside on the street a lively demonstration was under way. A parade of mutant vegetables was dancing up and down the sidewalk. Copies of a recent exposé on Cynaco, published in Britain, were being distributed.

From sympathizer copy shops and Internet cafés throughout the city, the commander and her staff faxed and e-mailed press releases out to the international wire services and local networks. When their photographers straggled in, digital images and video clips were uploaded and disseminated, too.

A lawyer was standing by to meet Frankie and the other field agents at the police station. They were charged with misdemeanor battery, but Geek showed up with bail, so they were released and told to appear in court the following week. It was a major party scene when they reconvened that evening at the house, and Frankie was hailed as a conquering hero.

“Way to go, man!”

“Did you see the look on the dude's face?”

“Couldn't, dude. There was too much fucking pie on it!”

“What an arm!”

Geek was online, monitoring the congratulatory e-mail and the updates on press coverage that were coming in from all over the world. The commander was reading over his shoulder.

“The Brits were planning to pie him next week in London,” she yelled. “We got him first this time!”

“They're getting us major coverage in the London dailies!”

“Hey! We scored a back page in New Delhi!”

Clippings from the evening papers had been blown up to poster size and hung up on the wall. TV monitors and VCRs were stacked in a corner, taping the news coverage from the networks and cable stations. The Future of the World Forum had been a well-covered event, and who can resist a pie in the face? It was pure eye candy.

“
Tu est magnifique,
Frankie,” Charmey whispered that night when they finally returned to the Spudnik and crawled into their blankets.