All Over Creation (52 page)

“This land used to be mine,” Lloyd was proclaiming. “I would never have planted these ungodly abominations on my land.”

“You mean the potatoes?” the reporter asked.

“You can't call them potatoes, because they aren't,” Lloyd replied. “Government has them registered as pesticides. Hell, I don't know what to call them. But I'll tell you one thing: I pray to God my grandkids won't have to grow up eating them!”

They showed a close-up of the potato plant and then a shot of Phoenix and Ocean helping Lloyd into the field.

Now, in the living room, Phoenix high-fived his grandpa.

“Yeah!” he said. “You tell 'em, Tutu man!”

Lloyd raised his palm to meet his grandson's. He was clearly pleased, but his face looked gaunt and exhausted. I had tried to get him to go to bed earlier, promising to videotape the news for him, but he insisted on staying up to see it for himself.

On the screen Will was standing next to Cass with the potato fields stretching out behind them. The caption at the bottom of the screen read WILL QUINN, LIBERTY FALLS POTATO FARMER, FIELD OWNER.

“I believe in freedom of speech and the right to protest as much as any American,” Will was saying. “But this field is private property, and they got no right to trespass and undo all our hard work and interfere with my family's livelihood.”

“His field. Ha!” Lloyd said. He sat back in his wheelchair. His color was rising. I looked at my watch.

“Dad? Don't you want to lie down?”

He flapped his hand at me. I was an annoying fly, and all my concern for him was just so much buzzing.

On the television the police moved into the field to arrest the protesters, who resisted, letting their bodies go limp and falling to the ground. The police dragged them out through the dirt. I watched them cuff Geek's hands behind him, throw Melvin up against the side of a squad car, and stuff Lilith into the back of the paddy wagon. Momoko had joined Lloyd in the field by then. One of the sheriff's men stood there cajoling them, but they refused to move. Charmey was the only one of the Seeds who was not wearing protective gear. Instead she wore a pretty sundress. She looked fragile and very pregnant, dragged by the armpits between a burly pair of cops.

And where had I been during all of this?

Scared witless, I'd entered the field, grabbed Phoenix and Ocean, and tried to haul them back to safety. It's that old fear of the cops. Hang back. Stay clear. Disappear. Clutch Poo and swear to the others that if they dare to leave my side again, I will lock them in the root cellar for life. But of course they wouldn't come. They were mortified—here it is, their moment of glory, and Mommy shows up. Panicking, I looked around for help. I saw Will talking to Odell. They were watching me and the kids. Odell shrugged, and Will spoke to Cass, then started toward us. He ignored me and addressed Phoenix. “You've made your point, son,” he said, taking hold of his arm. “Now come along.” In the face of that much authority, Phoenix's determination wavered, and Will led us all back across the road, behind the cordon.

Now, in the living room, watching the replay of the arrests on TV, Phoenix glared at me. “I shoulda stayed with the Seeds,” he said. “I shoulda gotten arrested, too. Jail's not so bad.”

Far better to be in jail than in the same house with your mother.

Just then Elliot's face appeared on the screen.

“Shhh,” I said without meaning to, and the room fell silent.

“—like a modern-day witch hunt,” he was saying with a smooth and pleasant smile. “Hysterical muckraking and fear-mongering by people who don't understand the careful science behind these technologies. These new crops are designed to minimize the environmental impact of some of the older farming methods, and as for the issue of human health, there's absolutely no evidence to substantiate accusations that—”

Lloyd sat upright and waved a trembling finger at the set. “Who's that?” His agitation was extreme. I jumped up and started looking for his nitroglycerin tablets.

“I recognize him,” Lloyd said. “I saw him yesterday.”

A caption scrolled across the screen, below Elliot's face: ELLIOT RHODES—CYNACO CORPORATION.

“No way!” Phoenix said. He turned and stared at me.

“What?” Ocean cried, tugging at her brother's shirt. “I don't get it. What does it mean?”

But Lloyd got it. He twisted in his chair and stared at me. His eyes were bloodshot. His hands gripped the padded arms. Behind him, on the television, the reporter had moved on to an interview with a spokesman from the interfaith group, who was demanding that the children of Power County be protected from pornographers.

I stood there holding out Lloyd's bottle of pills. Offering.

“Daddy?”

The word sounded like a question, and his answer was clear. As the high color drained from his face, he clutched his chest. Then he slumped forward, senseless, and toppled from his chair.

sixth

I love everybody! I love everything!

—Luther Burbank, sermon at San Francisco's First Congregational Church

Cass studied Elliot as he talked. He sat at their kitchen table, leaning forward, and he moved his hands a lot, something she remembered from when he was her teacher and would get excited about something he was saying.

“Frankly, Will,” Elliot was saying, tapping the table, “I don't understand your reluctance. The Potato Promotions Council is on board with this. Damage was clearly done. We just want to see you recoup your losses, and in return we're asking you to help farmers everywhere by taking a stand to ensure that others in your position aren't victimized by this type of criminal mischief in the future.”

Will wasn't saying much. “If they told you they'd reimburse you,” Elliot said, “they were lying. These kids don't have two cents to their name. We're going to provide you with counsel and cover any court costs that the suit might incur. Of course we'd rather none of this had happened. We'd rather just ignore it, but that's not possible now. It's too . . . conspicuous. Too much press. Really, they brought it on themselves.”

He turned his palms upward. His hands were clean, and his nails were buffed. Will's hands in comparison were big and hard, and now he was rubbing his face with them, up and down, like he was splashing on cold water. “What do you say, Cass?”

She thought for a while. Elliot was drumming on the table again. There was an underlying impatience in his manner that he was trying to hide, but she recognized it. She'd watched him pace back and forth in the dank room at the top of the stairs, waiting for poor Yummy to get her insides scraped out. It seemed to take forever, and he didn't say a word for the longest time, just walked back and forth, stopping occasionally at the window to stare down over the train yard, and maybe he felt the accusation in her eyes, because finally he turned and spoke to her. “I'm really bummed about this, too, you know. I wish none of this had ever happened, but it did. I'm just trying to help out, is all.”

It was the same tone she was hearing now, bullying, ingratiating, and a little defensive, only he'd gotten better at smoothing it out.

“What's your role in all this?” she asked. “Are you a lawyer?”

Elliot smiled, but it was more for Will's benefit than for hers. “I work for a public relations firm that represents Cynaco,” he said. His voice was careful and good humored, like he was trying to show Will what a nice, patient guy he was to indulge the wife's questions. “Normally I wouldn't be involved on this level, but since this case involves old friends . . .”

“We're not your friends,” she said.

His smile wavered. “Well, I couldn't say. But Yummy is. She's been keeping an eye on that gang for me.”

“She has?”

“In a manner of speaking. I was worried about her. You saw the way they moved in on the family, exploiting her father's illness.”

“No,” Cass said. “They weren't exploiting. They were helping.”

“They got him all riled up, and he had a heart attack. That wasn't much help.”

“He had the heart attack when he saw you on the news. The children said he keeled right over.”

His face reddened. “I don't think—”

Will broke in then. “Cass, that's hearsay. And besides, it's not the point.”

“Yes,” said Elliot.

“No,” Cass said. “It's totally the point. He doesn't care about Yummy or Lloyd. He never did. You weren't here before, Will. You don't know what happened.”

“Cassie, the question is what to do now.”

Cass turned back to Elliot. “Why do you need us? You've got the police and witnesses. All those church people on the bus.”

“The damages occurred on your property. The DA wouldn't mind making an example of these kids, but he's not eager to move forward unless you're on board.”

“Well, then I don't think we should press charges, Will. Our damages were so small, whether they pay us back or not, and I don't want to have anything more to do with this business than we can help.”

She looked at Elliot critically. “I remember your history class, you know. You were an okay teacher.”

“Thanks.”

“It's a shame you turned out like this.”

“Like what?”

“Lying to your friends. Doing whatever it is you do for that company.”

“Cynaco's not a monster,” he said, giving Will another long-suffering smile. “Neither am I. There are millions of starving people out there. We're just trying to feed the world.”

Will nodded. “Those plants were our private property,” he said. “It was wrong to destroy them.”

 

 

Lilith telephoned the next day from the jail where the Seeds were being held. She sounded terse and upset.

“We heard you're pressing charges. I wouldn't have called you, except nobody's answering at the Fullers'.”

She went on to explain. Charmey was having cramps. She was nauseated, and her lower back hurt. She'd had some bloody discharge over the night. Lilith was afraid she might be going into labor prematurely.

“I told her we had to tell someone,” Lilith said. “She wanted you.”

“Hold on,” Cass said. “I'll be right there.”

It took the rest of the day, but by the late afternoon Charmey had been transferred to the hospital and the doctor had given her a steroid and something to relax her and make her sleep. Cass stood by her bedside talking on the phone.

“Well, make it your jurisdiction,” she said into the receiver. “Do what you have to do, Billy, because when the doctor releases her, I'm taking her home with me.”

She hung up the phone and looked at Charmey. The girl's face was pale, her wild mop of black hair flattened against the pillow. Cass pulled the curtain shut around her, then left the room and took the elevator to Intensive Care.

She found Lloyd in one of the cubicles that faced onto the nurses' station. He lay there, eyes closed, arms straight at his sides. A web of tubing fed into his limbs, and a heart monitor beeped weakly above his head. On the oscilloscope screen a thin green line peaked and dipped, scrolling out the reading of his life.

Cass stood at the foot of the bed. Behind her she could hear the hospital sounds—footsteps, phones ringing, voices—but in front of her everything was still, except for the thin green beeping of the EKG. She heard Poo's voice cry out, “Caaa, caaa!” and she turned to see Yummy hurrying past the nurses' station with the baby clamped to her hip. He had spotted Cass and was squirming, reaching for her. Cass held out her arms.