American Woman (21 page)

Juan had worked out a system to make a good gun in just three or four hours, and after the first in each style was done he could go even faster, by using the completed guns as patterns. In the barn they all watched him run the stub of a pencil around the tight inside curve of the trigger, along the length of the muzzle. Once the shape was hacked out of the plank with the bandsaw it was just a matter of rounding the corners to make it “3-D,” as Juan said. The gun came out “2-D” in that while it was as thick as the plank it was cut from, it was basically flat. “3-D” meant rounding the slab of the muzzle into something resembling a tube, although not really hollow.

It was another mania, Jenny thought, like their combat training and perhaps even their eulogy tape. The activity might stem from some clear objective, but soon enough the objective was lost, while the frenzy of action kept going. In no time they'd made full sets of “weapons” and then they kept making more, as if adding to a precious stockpile. Soon the barn floor was covered with Juan's many false starts, some ruined by unsteady handling against the blade of the saw, at the silhouette-cutting-out stage; some ruined after that, in the making-the-gun-3-D stage. Once the girls had been fully instructed they worked with wood chisels and hammers and pocket knives, and, less serenely, with the bandsaw as a sort of a lathe. This was Yvonne's innovation. The bandsaw was turned on, so that its shrieking complaint filled the barn, and then the gun-in-progress was held at arm's length until the wildly vibrating blade just nicked it, sending little chunks of wood like bullets in unpredictable directions. Juan said, “You shouldn't fuck around with a tool you don't know how to use,” and, “That's good, bitch. That fucks up the blade,” but it was clear that Yvonne's recklessness threatened him in some way. He tried to cut guns out more and more quickly, with a lot of gazing into the distance, so that they came out with wiggles on top of the muzzles, or with no trigger guards, or with very short grips.

One afternoon when Jenny looked in on them Pauline was sitting cross-legged in a far corner hacking at a crude gun with a chisel she gripped in her fist. She suddenly flung the chisel, with incredible violence, toward the back of the barn. It struck against the wall with a
pow
and thumped into the hay. “I got a splinter,” she said.

“Good luck finding that chisel,” Juan said, without looking up. “Move your ass while you remember where it landed.”

“I got a splinter,” Pauline repeated.

“Your hands can use some splinters and calluses, woman. That's a little tiny step to redemption, getting a sliver from doing hard work.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Pauline said.

Juan put down the gun he was drawing. “Whenever you're ready,” he said.

Pauline didn't move.

“Move your narrow ass and find that chisel!” Juan yelled. “We only have two fucking chisels!”

“Make me, Adolf!” Pauline yelled. But she finally got to her feet, very slowly, and spent a long time brushing sawdust off her knees, thighs and backside. Then she started picking her way toward the spot where the chisel had fallen.

There was no longer any way to pretend, Jenny decided, that they were preparing to work on their book. They weren't exactly avoiding it. But the book was like “ego reconstruction,” whatever this was: an activity they saw themselves as performing because they had the intention. And yet they never did it by day because they said it was too hot to sit in the house writing, and they never did it by night because by then they were always a little too drunk. Now a heatwave had settled on them. The house had a thermometer by the back door, a novelty one that was glued to a mountain landscape in a cheap metal frame. “A hundred,” Yvonne read one morning, squinting wetly, wearing nothing but cut-offs and a bra. “It's a hundred!”

“It's more than a hundred,” said Juan. “That thing stops at a hundred. Not that the piece of crap works.”

“It does work!”

“That's not mercury in there, that's food dye.”

“Last week it said seventy-five.”

“Then it ain't never worked. It ain't never been seventy-five since we've been in this dump.”

“That picture looks like California,” Pauline said. “That picture looks nothing like here.”

“Ain't no California I know.”

“It looks like the Sierras.”

“Didn't you have a nice castle in the Sierras?”

“The Cascades, and shut up.”

“You shut up!”

“
You
shut up!”

Every day that week Jenny drove into Liberty, partly to get away from them but mostly because she expected a letter. Typically weeks felt like months, and she always expected her letter from William too soon. Now a reply wasn't just due, but well overdue. Finally, though, something lay in the dim little box. She stared at it, her fingertips tingling—then she snatched it and tore open the envelope. The thick square of many-times-folded notepaper within, written over so densely that dark tangles of ink showed through on the reverse, was so familiar to her that for an instant she misrecognized it. But it wasn't a letter from William, it was her letter, to him. The only other thing in the envelope was a small slip of paper on which Dana had written,
Don't write any more or send anything. I've moved. Sorry. Dana
.

She stood a long time holding the various pieces of paper, the tiny bronze eagles repeating in rows all around her. The lobby was silent and empty; she made her way blinking into the daylight and then into the car. Another car pulled into the lot and she drove away quickly. When she arrived at her pay phone there was somebody in it, a traveling-businessman type with an unknotted tie and his jacket slung over his shoulder. She drove up and down like a perturbed animal trying to reclaim territory until he finally left. Then there was no answer at Dana's. She got back in the car and drove to a small park and waited, her head in her hands. After half an hour she drove back to the phone, but there was no answer again. She was pressed so intently against the handset that the shell of her ear throbbed with pain. She closed her eyes against the sun beating into the booth and suddenly the line opened; she had almost forgotten that it was still ringing. She heard the soft hissing inside the wire, the sound of the void between herself and Colorado, and then to her bounding relief Dana's voice said, tentatively, “Hello?”

“Dana,” she breathed. “Dana, it's me.”

Dana's voice leaped over hers. “I said not to call!”

“But Dana—”

The line went dead.

When she called back Dana snatched up the phone. “Don't do this,” Dana said.

“Don't hang up, Dana, don't, Dana, don't—”

Dana interrupted harshly. “I got sick. And I saw the doctor. Don't try to act like you're surprised.”

It was her turn to pause. She heard the hiss inside the wire again, but it seemed subtly altered, as if an element that was not aural, that she could feel but not hear, had been added to it. She thought of something her father once said. Her father had always been uncannily good with cats; he'd been able to discipline them, to command their respect and control their behavior. “It's all in the way you go
pssst!
” he'd said. “There's two different
pssst!
sounds to get their attention. One sounds like the wind in the grass, which they love. One sounds like a snake, which they fear.” To her the two
pssst!
s were exactly alike. Her hands were pouring sweat; she was surprised to see that she was still holding the returned letter tightly. It was stained from her palm. “Is that clinic still there on the corner?”

“I think so, but I can't go there now.”

“Please go, just for a checkup. It won't take very long.”

Dana was using the silence to signal her anger, not to make a decision. At last she said, “I'll be there in about half an hour.”

Their conversation lasted just a fraction of the time Jenny waited for it to begin. “That thing you sent me made me very, very sick,” Dana said. “You can't imagine what things are like here. There are doctors all over the place. That location, where I left it, there are people working there who've been examined maybe five or six times. And then they found me.”

“There's no way they could have, unless you weren't careful.”

“You're blaming me?” Dana seemed to be struggling to control her voice. After a moment she said, “I don't understand why you got into this.”

“I'm helping them. The way you help me.”

“You're in no position to help anybody.”

“How did they find you? Did they see you? Did you tell anyone?”

“God! Don't insult me.”

“Then they've only talked to you because there's a—flu in the area. They're just talking to people who live there.”

After a long pause Dana said, “Remember how Sandy talked at a memorial service? For those people who died of this illness? The doctors are tracking down everybody who spoke there, and everybody they know. They talked to Sandy about three weeks ago. Now she's run off to hide with her sister.”

“Did she tell them anything?”

“She must have told them she knew someone in Boulder.” When Jenny didn't say anything Dana added, “I came back from work and they were sitting on my porch. In dark suits and sunglasses, the whole fucking deal! With your letter right there on my table.”

She couldn't seem to keep the shake out of her voice. “I'm sorry, Dana.”

“Be sorry for yourself. If Sandy told them about me, then she must have told them about your great admirer. And he knows where you are. He must be how you got into this.”

“You know where I am.”

“Not exactly, and I wish I knew less.”

“I'm sorry,” she said again. She felt sick, as if the unidentifiable element inside their connection hadn't been a wire tap but a poisonous gas. Their conversation seemed poisoned.

“I'm hanging up now,” Dana said. “We've been on for five minutes.”

I
T WAS
a long time, several shoppers going in and coming out again with their bags hugged to their chests or in ramshackle carts that they pushed to their cars, but then she saw the boy step out the front door and light a cigarette standing in front of the store's big glass windows, against the placards announcing store specials. He cupped his hands around the cigarette and craned toward it, but with his neck stiffly bent back, as if trying to keep something balanced on the top of his head. She realized he was holding his Afro away from the flame. Somehow the deliberateness of his awkwardness made him look practiced at what he was doing, though she could tell that he wasn't a smoker. He glanced over his shoulder into the store and then moved sideways, away from the line of sight out the windows. When he'd moved far enough he tilted back against the cinder block wall and surveyed the expanse before him, taking only occasional, very quick drags.

He was a beautiful kid, and the instant she thought it her eyes filled with ridiculous tears. Watching him, she understood exactly the pleasure he felt. He was taking a cigarette break like a man, savoring his aloneness. It was a startling contrast to her own cracked up, desperate condition. After talking to Dana she'd felt she couldn't bear to be alone, couldn't bear going back to the farm, couldn't possibly stay on the road she was driving so badly, and so she'd found herself here, staking out a bag boy. She put her sunglasses on and restarted the engine before he could see her, but at the same time the boy peered forward, and then he flicked the butt away in a long arc and began to walk toward her. “Hey!” he called cheerfully. “Not from Nam! You sure eat. I thought those groceries would last you a year.” Just then a small middle-aged white man, the sort to walk tilted forward as if always looking for something, ventured out the store's doors and squinted tentatively at the lot.

“Thomas?” he called.

Drawn up short, the boy turned around and waved to the man across the hundred or so feet between them with great sweeps of his arm, as if directing a distant airplane. “Over here, Mr. M.”

“Are you staying or going?”

“I ain't sure.”

“If you're going, punch out.” The admonition was distracted and mild. Then the man went back in.

“That's the boss,” the boy said, arriving at her window. “He's as blind as a bat.”

“You seemed worried he'd see you were smoking.”

“I don't
worry
. Mr. M thinks I'm too young to smoke, but I'm eighteen years old.” This seemed to remind him to unhilt his comb. “You here to shop?” he inquired, as he worked on his hair.

“I'm just driving around.”

“That sounds cool. I'll drive with you.”

“I think you're busy,” she laughed, but then she realized he wasn't kidding at all. He was sprinting back into the store. As soon as he disappeared inside she tried to make herself speed away, but before she could even debate it he was coming back out. “Days like this they don't need me, but Mr. M lets me stay if I want extra hours,” he panted, climbing into the car. “I just had to punch out.”

Once they were driving she felt calmer and more reasonable. There was no reason to think she was endangering this kid. She hadn't endangered the Liberty postmistress, or the man who'd sold her the mousetrap, just by talking with them, had she? She followed his directions through the outskirts of town to a lonely brown structure with one slotlike window before she caught wind of what he was doing. “Is this a bar?” she exclaimed. “You don't look old enough to drink.”

The observation offended him deeply. “Bet I'm older than you. This bar is my regular place, wait and see. They all know me in here.”

Inside the bar felt murkier than it might have at night, when the small lamps and the pinball machine would cast more of a glow. Now they were washed out by the weak sunlight through the slot of a window, and that light didn't go very far. There were just a few people, two older black men at the bar and an older black woman behind it. As they walked in the bartender gave them a withering look. “Two beers,” the boy said. “Or just give me a Coke,” he complained. “I'm just here with my friend.”