The Oregon Experiment (24 page)

“Higher!” she demanded, and Sequoia pushed harder, trying to piggyback on her daughter’s joy. A wisp of cloud blew across the sky. Trinity held her red shoes straight out in front of her, the gold sparkles glittering in the sun as she clicked the heels together. Two chipmunks—scratchy on the bark of an elm tree—chased each other around the trunk, then a sudden crash and rumble sent them shooting up into the branches. Four
anarchist kids, one of them a girl on a longboard, were coming down the walk. Another carried a wooden highway stake, striking bench backs, garbage cans, and the chain that draped between low posts around the flowerbeds. Another—medium height, thin, and all in black—was staring at Sequoia and Trinity.

“Higher!” Trinity called, and Sequoia gave a good shove. His stare was unnerving, without a shred of self-consciousness, and she flashed back to the bailiff who’d stared at them like they were guilty, like their recklessness had—

A kick! The sharp heel of Trinity’s shoe caught her flush on the mouth. She yelled in shock, doubling over, reaching out to steady the swing that was angling off-kilter.

“What happened, Mommy?”

Tasting blood, down on her knees, she sucked on her lip. The same spot where the scar was.

Trinity was standing in front of her, alarmed, patting her hair. “Mommy?”

“I’m okay,” she said. “It just surprised me. I wasn’t paying attention.”

A shadow covered them, and Trinity looked up.

“You all right?”

Holding her mouth, she stood up and turned. “It’s nothing.” Then she forced a laugh. It was the kid who’d been staring at them.

“There’s a drinking fountain by the—” he pointed “—over there.”

She nodded.

“Your mom’s okay,” he said to Trinity, his voice kindly, gentle. “Just a little bash in the mouth.”

Trinity scrutinized him. Wordless.

The kid’s head twitched—two times—uncontrollable, it seemed—and then he scuffed off in his combat boots to catch up with his pals, Trinity pointing after him.

Later, standing in front of a mirror at home, Sequoia curled back her lip. It wasn’t so bad: a tooth-sized patch of mangled flesh, already healing. She swished with salt water. The contusion had inflamed the thin scar on her lip. She watched herself pucker, smile, exhale. Then she filled two bowls with rice and stir-fry, and she and Trinity sat cross-legged at opposite ends of the loveseat for dinner.

“What if pigs had trunks?” Trinity asked.

“Then they’d search for peanuts in the mud.” Sequoia speared a zucchini triangle with her chopsticks. “What if trains had wings?” she asked.

Trinity looked at the ceiling. “Then clouds would look like railroad tracks,” she said. “What if we had hammers instead of hands?”

“Then we’d fix everything as soon as it broke,” Sequoia said. “What if—”

“What if I saw the broken boy again?”

“You wouldn’t!” she snapped, then said more calmly, “Because he’s not real.” And she thought of him now: seventeen years old. Quadriplegic. The family had moved away to be near his rehab. Minneapolis would already be snowy. Trinity was gnawing at the cuticle on her thumb, and Sequoia pushed her hand away from her mouth.

At the courthouse and afterward, that horrible day had elbowed into her consciousness, and this evening, instead of backing off, it was stalking her. “What if—” she began, but Trinity bit down on her thumb. “Stop it!” Sequoia shouted, and took her daughter in her arms.

Muffled against her chest, Trinity said, “I see him all the time.”

“No!” Sequoia yanked open her shirt. She believed in the body’s power to heal, in the power of touch. Through the body all relations and experiences were imbibed; by touch and feel we perceive the world. So if Trinity’s hallucinations flared, she held her tight and nursed her to sleep. But now, as her daughter suckled, she was haunted by a recurring doubt: that her fear of repeating her parents’ mistakes had created its own neuroses in Trinity, which was precisely what her psychiatrist father would smugly insist. But as quickly as that doubt gripped her, she denied it: No—through the body we reach the spirit, heart, and mind, not the other way around.

“Have you ever worked?” he asked.

The professor gave him a look. “I teach at two o’clock today.”

“I mean actual work,” he said. “Like
work.
” He’d cleaned out their gutters—a nasty job in the wet, up to his elbows in leaves rotted to slime—and was now hosing off his arms.

“When I was a kid—” Scanlon began, but Naomi interrupted, opening the back door and calling, “Come wash up inside, Clay. With warm water.” He’d seen her at the picture window, glancing out every few minutes with Sammy on her shoulder. During the morning she’d offered him apple
cider, which he’d declined, then coffee or tea, and he’d told her straight-faced, “My religion prevents it.”

“Oh,” she said, “Mormon?”—a cute-as-hell combination of surprise and knee-jerk respect.

“Dewdism,” he said.

Her head cocked. “I’m not familiar with—”

“I’m the Dewdha,” he said. “The Mountain Dewdha.”

“Ah,” she said, a smile brightening her puzzled face. “Not one of the major religions. Although I’ve seen your ads.”

“It’s a feel-good religion. No crusades or slaughter. Less gore, more lemon-lime.”

And her face was still sparking when she returned from Dari-Mart with a 32-ounce cup of Mountain Dew.

Following Scanlon inside, he wiped his boots on the mat. Naomi led him to the kitchen sink and turned on the tap, flicking her finger under the water until it ran hot. As he washed his arms, she plucked a fresh towel from a drawer and held it there, waiting for him to rinse away the suds. She was making soup. Chopped celery and red onion were heaped on the cutting board. A bunch of shiny wet carrots with greens shooting off their tops. A head of garlic. Steam rose from a simmering pot, smelling of chicken fat, pepper, and spices.

“Anyway,” Scanlon said, his arms folded across his chest, leaning on the door of the fridge, “when I was a kid, my dad made me rototill this huge garden every year. Like half our backyard. Trust me. Connecticut humidity? You have no idea.”

Clay took the soft towel from Naomi and dried his arms right up to his biceps.
“Rototiller,”
he scoffed. “The machine does all the work. You just follow it around and make sure it doesn’t run over the cat.”

“The shit you think you know,” Scanlon said, but Clay had made Naomi laugh.

“Stay for lunch?” she said, taking back the towel and folding it. Which made no sense with a wet towel. “Soup’ll be ready soon.”

“Panama’s trial starts today. I gotta go. Skulls to crack.” But the soup smelled damn good.

Scanlon reached into his back pocket for his wallet and slipped out a couple twenties. “Next time you do the window.”

He snatched the cash, and when he dropped down the stoop Naomi said, “Crack a skull for us.”

Rain held off as he hoofed it down to Courthouse Square. There was a drum circle. Some cops. The scrape and rumble of skateboarders doing ollie grabs, tailslides, nosegrinds, and nollies. A heelflip thwacked too close to Clay so he threw an elbow—Back off. The cops seemed cool enough, keeping everybody on the side of the square by the county courthouse. A tall stone building more than a hundred years old, it was painted white and had a clock tower, and over the door were bronze sculptures of pioneers trailing an ox cart. The federal courthouse next to it, built on the site of the old Egyptian Theater, was gray cement, cubic, with small tinted windows. It looked Soviet, like a prison or bunker.

Clay said hey to some girls who lived at the Random House and looked up to see Flak approaching the cops with a box of doughnuts. Food Not Bombs was supposed to serve sandwiches at lunchtime, but who knew where he’d got three pink cardboard flats of doughnuts. Flak was an older guy, maybe thirty-five. He wasn’t tall, but he was strong. Quick and strong. The cops all knew him. Everybody did. But the cops ignored him and his doughnuts, chattering away even as they straightened up their line and rested their palms on their clubs.

“I
know
you guys like doughnuts,” Flak was saying. A real performer, he was holding up the box on one hand and reaching out with the other like a singer. The drums got real hushed, everybody watching. “I seen you guys eating doughnuts before.” A couple cops finally cracked a smile. “See?” he said. “We’re all brothers.” And Flak believed it, even though none of them took a doughnut.

“Where ya been?” Entropy said, tugging on Clay’s pant leg, and he wondered if she or any of the other girls knew. He could tell Flak at least suspected. He’d seen Clay splitting a beer with Panama down by the river the night before they torched the SUVs.

“We’ve been here since morning,” Entropy said.

If people at the Random House knew, then lots more had heard. Clay had told no one, and he was pretty sure Panama hadn’t either, so no one really knew. Except for the professor, and maybe Naomi. And for a minute, as the drums beat louder, and he moved through the kids in the square, it was just Clay and the photo of Naomi, her picture coming to life with one sunny hand sliding down her eggshell belly.

“Clay!” Flak shouted, clamping an arm around his neck and throwing solid, easy punches against his chest.

Clay spun around and tried to flip him over his hip, but there was no getting Flak off balance, so they struggled until Flak let go.

“Long time no see,” Flak said, even though they’d shared a Mountain Dew right here yesterday.

“How goes it?” Clay said.

“Beautiful, man. Free doughnuts for the people. But the occiffers ain’t partakin’. Hey, we gotta get somebody to teach doughnut making for the Free Skool.” He turned toward the kids who were watching him. There were always kids watching Flak. “Who knows how to make doughnuts?” he shouted.

“Stand back,” a voice ripped through a bullhorn. Everybody up front dashed away from the cops, then turned to watch an Asian kid called Fugu taunt them with “Panama’s a martyr, motherfuckers,” and making like he was about to nail them with his Big Gulp full of pop.

“Your sort of thing,” Flak said. “Go back him up.”

Clay ignored him. There was a time this was exactly his sort of thing, but not today.

Fugu shouted, “Die, you fucking pigs!” Then, like pulling the pin from a hand grenade, he yanked the straw through the lid with his teeth and heaved the cup at the cops. Before it hit the ground, they’d slammed him onto his belly, given him three Taser zaps, a knee in his back, and crunched his face into the cement.

“Fugu’s supposed to teach harmonica at the Free Skool,” Flak said.

“He’s not that good anyway,” Clay said.

“Maybe he’ll bone up in County. Come home a virtuoso.”

“He’ll be lucky to get County,” Clay said. “Attacking cops and terrorism, with alert-level yellow and whatnot.”

“They’ll search his place for sure,” Flak said. “Better be clean.”

The crowd cheered for Fugu as the cops dragged him cuffed and bloody behind their lines. Rain started to fall, and a smell came off Clay’s wet jacket that he’d noticed earlier but couldn’t place: chicken, onion, spices—Naomi’s soup. Then, watching a police car spin around the corner with Fugu in back, he thought, Search his place.

That night, after dark, Clay stripped his apartment of the wire and blasting caps, the tools, flashlights, and dissected alarm clock. He put it all in a garbage bag that he stuffed in his duffel and hoofed down to a spot on the riverbank where he used to get high. Behind the footing of a train trestle
there was a tiny cave, hollowed out by erosion. Transients and kids knew about it, but he’d take a chance. He tied the garbage bag up tight and shoved it in the back of the hole. Nothing that couldn’t be replaced.

He sat on the footing and looked out over the river. He stuck his nose into his sleeve and sniffed deep, the smell of Naomi’s soup arousing a tug of hunger.

Naomi needed a break. She needed a shower. She needed to shave her legs and take a nap. She needed to put cabbage leaves and ice packs on her breast. This was her third infection in three months, but she refused antibiotics. She ran to two or even three appointments a day—acupuncture, reiki, lactation work. They’d also suggested yoga, meditation, and a weekend at Breitenbush Hot Springs, but she didn’t want to take time away from Sammy. Her nipples were permanently painted with gentian violet, staining his lips and mouth like he’d been feeding himself fistfuls of berry pie. She packed her infected breast in ice between feedings but couldn’t numb the hard, painful lumps: ten pounds of potatoes forced into a five-pound sack. And all day long—every minute—she obsessively sniffed almond in the folds of fat under his chin, carbon encrusted on the fireplace brick, Summer Breeze Palmolive in the kitchen, jars of mustard and pickles, afraid that if she didn’t keep her nose firing, she’d lose it again. As she walked through the living room with a basket of laundry, she realized she could still smell Clay in the house.

The only real relief came from Sammy. If she could bear the initial pain and the first few seconds of suckling, the flow of milk and release of pressure were comforting. She tried expressing milk in the shower, but the self-flagellation of wringing out her inflamed breast was beyond her.

Scanlon wanted to help, but she told him over and over that short of mastectomy there was nothing he could do. Could he give her a back rub? She didn’t want to be mauled. Could he run her a bath? The shower felt better. Make slow, gentle love to her? Again, the mauling. Slow and gentle, he promised. No needless jostling, she insisted. Could he pleasure her with his tongue? She really wasn’t in the mood right now. A glass of water? Another ice pack? Yes, she said. Fine. Thank you.

It made her anxious that he’d do anything that took him away from writing, but he claimed he’d roughed out an article that would work as a book chapter. As long as the secessionist movement fed his writing and
didn’t distract him and made him less demanding of her, maybe it was a good thing that after meeting with Sequoia last week he’d agreed to be its director. “Only as a figurehead,” he assured her.

With Sammy asleep and the monitor on the vanity, she stepped into the shower. The water pressure was pummeling, so she tapped the faucet handle down to weaken the spray, then with both hands held her swollen breast under the water like it wasn’t part of her body—like holding up a feverish raccoon, its claws tearing into her chest. But under the warm spray the claws began to retract. The relief would be temporary, allowing her to breathe, to loosen up and navigate back to herself.