All Over Creation (69 page)

Will was talking with Geek, who was doing a last-minute check of the automotive fluids. Will was anticipating some problems selling off his NuLifes, Cass had told me. There were boycotts of genetically engineered products in Europe that were eroding the market, and prices were down. McCain, the largest Canadian potato processor, had decided to go GE free, and Frito-Lay had followed suit.

Will was saying to Geek, “I'm not going to plant them if people don't want to buy them.”

He was ducking under the chassis with Geek. “Don't get me wrong, it's a solid potato, but I ran that data, and I can't see any appreciable gain in yields. I'm betting there won't be much savings in inputs either. Not in the end.”

He was tailing Geek around the back of the Winnebago. “Heard there's an organic dairy moving in over by Idaho Falls that might mean a new market for hay. Thought I might check it out.”

He was saying, “Philosophically speaking, I've got nothing against growing organic, you know. Problem is, you can't eat philosophy.”

But Geek was running checks on all the systems of the Spudnik II and simply wasn't paying much attention.

So Will shrugged his shoulders and stated flat out, “It's not like any of us are in love with chemicals, but you can't operate three thousand acres any other way. If I had a choice, I'd farm without them.”

Geek straightened his back and turned to face Will. “You got a choice, dude. We've all got choices. Lots of them. Every single second of the day we're making choices. You've just been making bad ones, is all.”

What farmer wouldn't bristle? Cass was standing next to me holding Tibet, and I heard her draw in her breath. But Will held his tongue and just nodded. “Well,” he said mildly, “we'll see.”

Cass looked at me then, and her eyes widened.

I was hanging on to Poo and watching Phoenix and Ocean, running frequent checks on their whereabouts. I was looking for signs of imminent departure—a packed duffel bag, a furtive glance in my direction. But Phoenix was just hanging out with Frankie and Lilith, and then just with Lilith, kind of sidling up to her. With a shock I realized he was flirting. He had a crush. I held my breath and prayed.

No, it was too late for that.

Then I saw Lilith cock her head at Phoenix and say, “Well, are you coming?”

And, to my everlasting amazement, I watched my son shrug his boyish shoulders. “I can't leave my mom,” he said. “She needs me.”

Then Geek ambled over and gave me a powerful hug. “So maybe I'll see you in Pahoa,” he said, and I really hoped he would.

Frankie took Tibet in his arms one last time before handing her back to Will, and his eyes got all red rimmed and his face so stricken with grief that everyone looked away and got real intent on saying good-byes, and there erupted a sudden confusion of kissing and hugging and handshakes that lasted until the Seeds piled into the Spudnik II. Then the doors closed, and the boxy, inelegant vessel of revolutionary zeal trundled out of the driveway and turned onto the road.

Phoenix stood next to me. I put my arm around his shoulder, and he let me.

“Thanks,” I said. We watched the vehicle disappear behind the poplars, and then we went into the house to finish packing.

We left Liberty Falls in mid-November, a week or so before Thanksgiving. Cass asked us to stay. She wanted to make a big dinner and celebrate, but I found it a lot easier to be thankful outside of Liberty Falls and told her so. Cass hid her disappointment, as always, but I figured it was a lot easier now because she truly had so much to be thankful for. We would be staying in close touch, since, in a moment of weakness, I had volunteered to run the Garden of Earthly Delights Web site from Pahoa, and Cass would be distributing the seeds from Liberty Falls. We would all be meeting up in Hawaii come winter. Cass was delighted when I invited them. It would be the first trip she and Will had taken since their honeymoon, and they would need to buy new suitcases, she said.

“Geek might be there, too,” I told her. We were having a pre-Thanksgiving dinner, with a turkey and vegetables from the garden and, at my insistence, a sampling of Momoko's many promiscuous squashes. “There's a spirulena algae farm over on the Kona side of the island that he's interested in visiting.”

Will had been focused intently on his plate, scooping out the baked contents of something that was not quite Delicata, nor was it Sweetnut. Now he looked up. “The Hawaiian superfood,” he said. “
Aloha Aina.
‘Love of the land,' right?”

I stared at him, astonished. “How do you know that?”

Will sat back, looking pleased with himself. “Just because I'm a spud farmer from Idaho doesn't mean I'm not interested in all that alternative . . . you know . . . stuff.” He mashed a little of the squash with the back of his spoon and fed it to Tibet on the tip of his finger.

“Honey,” Cass said, “she's not ready for solid food yet.”

But Tibet smacked her lips and waved her arms enthusiastically.

“She likes it,” Will said, beaming and feeding her some more. “Don't worry, Cassie. It's organic.”

 

 

Momoko and I spent the last few days closing up the house.

“Just leave it,” Cass said. “We'll take care of it. Just pack what Momoko needs. If you forget anything, I'll send it.”

But Momoko didn't seem to need much at all. She put a few things in a small bag—a pair of pajamas and a toothbrush, a change of clothes and underwear, a bathing suit and a bathing cap, and the framed photograph of Lloyd standing next to a tiny Indian princess whose feather barely reached his belt buckle. And that was that.

“How about some of your favorite seeds?” I asked her. “Geek packed some up for you.”

But Momoko shook her head. “Plenty of seeds in Hawaii,” she said. “Lotsa nice plants already growing there.”

“Well, what about your gardening tools and all your stuff?”

“Too hard work,” she said. “I don't need to make garden in Hawaii. Everywhere is garden. It is enough.”

So we left the house exactly as it was. I told Cass that if Momoko didn't want her things by the end of the year, she and Will could just throw out what they couldn't use, and when the time came to go, we just walked away, leaving everything, even all of Lloyd's handwritten labels, in place.

Well, almost all of the labels. The last thing Momoko did was to take a piece of packing tape and a label that said TOASTER and stick it to the back of Phoenix's jacket when he wasn't looking. Ocean started to giggle, but Momoko shut her up, and nobody else said anything either. We rode in the Quinns' Suburban to the airport, where we said good-bye to Cass and Will, and then we transferred to three different planes. We made it all the way to the Big Island before Phoenix even noticed.

“Cute,” he said, peeling it off in the baggage claim at the Hilo airport. “I'm not a toaster.”

And you know what Geek would have said to that—in this day and age, without a label, how can you tell?

Seattle, November 30, 1999

 

Hey Tibet,

How ya doing, baby? So, we made it to Seattle, and the scene here is totally radical. I mean this thing is huge, and there's all these people who've taken to the streets to protest this fucked-up thing called the WTO, which you don't know about yet, but unfortunately you probably will. And what's cool is that there's workers and environmentalists and anarchists and direct action factions, all pulling together to take back the power. I'll write you more about this shit, but before that, I want to tell you about how we got here.

At first it was just more flat farmland, and, I mean, look around you. Boring, right? But then we headed north and suddenly we were on this totally gnarly road with curves that wound up and up into the Cascade Mountains. It had just snowed, all white against the blue sky, and there were these crazy trees that were the hugest living things I've ever seen.

We got to a rest stop—it was like a campground in the middle of a park with bathrooms—and I was pretty ragged out from being in the vehicle, so I took my board and skated around, and the next thing, I'm standing on this beach next to the most awesome lake, plunked right down there in the middle of the mountains. And it was so pretty and sparkly, and the water was an intense blue-green color—Geek said it came from glaciers—and I'll tell you, there was absolutely nothing around it. I mean, there were trees and stuff, but nothing
human
at all. And this next part that happened was probably on account of the dube we'd been smoking, but I was just sitting there next to the lake with my hands in this freezing water, and I started thinking about how Charmey would have totally gotten off on how pretty it was, and I started bawling like a baby—no offense—just missing her and wishing she could be there with me to see it.

Of course, it's a personal thing—Charmey was really into nature, and I prefer asphalt—but suddenly I understood why I'm doing all these political actions. It's because I gotta make sure there's still some nature around for you when you grow up, in case you decide you dig it, too. Geek took a picture of the lake, and I promise one of these days I'll take you back there so you can see for yourself, and we'll camp on the bank and look at all that sparkly water together.

For now, I'm just stoked to be back in the city, cruising around. The shit is going down in Seattle for real. I'm sending you a badass picture of me that was taken yesterday, on the first day of the Revolution. I hope you like it. And that's the report from the front. It's a class war, Tibet, and we're fighting for the planet, and your daddy's gotta go kick some ass. I'll write more later. Sayonara, baby. I love you.

Frank

 

 

Cass folded the letter and slipped it back into the envelope. Frankie's daughter was lying on a blanket in the middle of the floor, playing with her toes and watching Cass intently.

“You like it when I read his letters, don't you?” Cass said.

In the envelope were two photographs. Cass took them out. One was a snapshot of a glacial lake, azure and sparkling, set high up in the mountains. The other was a picture of Frankie in Seattle. He was standing on his skateboard, dressed all in black and carrying a placard. The lower part of his face was hidden by a gas mask, but from his eyes you could tell he was smiling. Looking more closely, Cass could read the slogan, drawn in black spray paint on the sign:

She held the picture up in front of the baby's face. “Look, Betty,” she said. “It's Daddy Frank.”

Betty flailed her arms and legs. Her tiny fist closed around the edge of the photo, and she waved it back and forth for a while, then she put a corner into her mouth.

“That's right,” Cass said, gently prying the picture away from her and replacing it with a pacifier. “Daddy's going to save the world.”

I would like to thank the potato farmers, the potato breeders, the plant pathologists, the seed savers, the wild potato collectors, the newspaper-men, the molecular biologists, the agricultural extension agents and the environmental activists who took time to answer my amateur's questions. I am grateful for the wealth of information these kind people so generously provided, and assert that if mistakes were made in this book, they are entirely my own.

Many thanks to Dan Jason, Jack Kloppenburg, Sascha Scatter, Sara and Jane Schultz, and John Stauber for their wise advice and wonderful stories.