The Oregon Experiment (41 page)

With some of the money he’d found in Seattle, Flak had bought this gear for Suzy Creamcheese, who was treesitting in the Siskiyou with a bunch of girls from Ashland. What Clay first knew of Flak was the big spender: money to pay off Clay’s mother’s back taxes so she could sell her house, money for beers, for vet bills and baby strollers, money for his ex-wife to have a wart removed from her cheek, plus dentures for a kid who’d lost most of his teeth in a car accident, and all this gear for Suzy Creamcheese. He’d spent the money fast and well and told Clay he felt much better, much relieved, when it was gone. “Money
is
the measure of the man,” he said. “The virtuous have none.”

Daria and Clay had gone down to the Siskiyou with him to demonstrate against the Eden Creek sale: 4,100 acres of old growth to Coastal Timber. There was no time to build platforms for the treesitters. The Bureau of Land Management had rushed through the sale on a Saturday and cutting was to begin on Monday morning. BLM goons and armed Coastal Timber guards manned the gates. But the Ashland girls—nearly fifty of them—clambered up foot trails at dawn, and when the first loggers rolled up the dirt road, the girls were hanging from branches like ornaments high up in the canopy.

When the three of them showed up, a lot of pissed-off loggers were leaning on their equipment, smoking and spitting chaw and yammering with the entire Jackson County Sheriff’s Department. News reporters napped in their cars, hoping the standoff would escalate.

It was Clay’s first time in the Siskiyou, and he was dazzled by the enormous thousand-year-old trees. Standing at the base and looking up, the canopy seemed as endless as a night sky, the girls as distant as stars. Nearly overcome by the sense of infinity, he put a hand on Daria’s belly—round with their baby—and felt limitless possibility. Then he envisioned this forest clear-cut to supply redwood decks for the McMansions defiling Wakonda Hill, their Oregon trees cut up and loaded on trains for Hilton Head, Orlando, Kennebunkport, and the other blights on the earth.

At noon, a judge accepted the Sierra Club’s petition and ruled that logging couldn’t begin until the Eden Creek sale was reviewed. The girls
belayed back to earth, triumphant. Reporters photographed the freakiest ones—dreads, mohawks, piercings, tats. Loggers and cops spun their tires and raced off throwing up stones and dust.

At five o’clock that evening, on a favorite bicycling road east of Ashland, a computer programmer on a three-thousand-dollar road bike, wearing a fluorescent-yellow Gore-Tex jacket and a lime-green helmet, was cycling with four friends who later testified that the fully loaded logging truck had intentionally crowded him on a curve, forcing him onto the sandy shoulder, where he lost control and was crushed beneath the truck’s wheels. He was dead on the spot. An investigation by the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department discovered no wrongdoing. Another shot in class warfare.

And now Clay let out line, descending until his cleats bit into the dead branch. He pulled out some slack and started to bounce, looking straight down at the vintage Porsche. He’d told Scanlon to go fuck himself at first, but when he found out the car belonged to Fenton … Shit. They all knew Cebert Fenton. In the late 1970s, he and some business-school professors bought most of Wakonda Hill, agreeing to keep the top half as open space if they could develop the bottom. But when a property-rights ballot measure threw out nearly all restrictions on land use, Fenton informed the city of Douglas that they could either let him carpet the hill with houses or compensate him with fifty-four million dollars. Day by day, Wakonda Hill was getting infested with massive houses, three-car garages, non-native plants, macadam, water features, and steroid-injected sod.

Making the destruction look like an accident wasn’t Clay’s first choice, since nothing sends a message like a molotov cocktail. But he figured he owed Scanlon one for sucking on his wife’s tits. In a few minutes they’d be even.

But the branch wasn’t breaking so easily. He had a good bounce going now, the branch surprisingly springy for all the rot. He let out more line and held on with both hands, bouncing harder until a sudden crack at the base vibrated through the wood and up into his legs.

Except when he lay on his mattress staring at her picture, he tried not to let himself think about Naomi, the fire that morning in her breasts, her nipples swelling to his tongue, the rush of her milk at the gentlest tug of his lips, the warm milk soothing his throat scorched by tear gas and his empty stomach churning up with the pain in his elbow and the loss of Flak. Naomi had nurtured him, sustained him. He had slept afterward, deeply
and soundly for two or three hours. And when they both woke up, when she couldn’t meet his eyes as she jerked Sammy’s stroller out of the apartment, she made it clear that it would never happen again, but also, maybe, that she didn’t regret that it had.

Maybe the damn branch wasn’t going to snap. He rode it hard, the dead twigs at the end nearly tapping the hood of the Porsche, then springing up so high he could touch the branch above where his rope was tied. Up and down, pushing and rising, his muscles tiring. And when he stared at her photo in the night, he desperately wanted her again. Wanted more. Wanted to have her. He wasn’t the same man he’d been before that morning. He loved her.

And he would not give up on the branch. He pounded it down and got another crack, a quiver. He pounded again, breathing hard, the muscles in his legs and back nearly spent, sweating despite the rain slapping his face and trickling down his neck.

He would have her. He had to have—

Two deep cracks, a release, a split between his feet, a sudden drop. He gasped as the branch twisted away beneath him, free-falling until the harness jerked at his groin and butt. Then he rested his head on the rope in the gently falling rain, swinging from side to side, weightless, his feet dangling, his heart still throbbing with desire.

The next day Naomi sat by the picture window watching the rain turn to hail, BBs of ice pelting the glass and collecting on the sill. She shifted Sammy to her other breast, and by the time he had his fill the dark clouds had given way to a deep blue sky and a blindingly bright yellow sun.

“This place makes me dizzy,” Joey said over the top of
Gourmet
magazine.

When Naomi didn’t respond, Joey asked, “What’re your Christmas dinner faves?” She dog-eared a page.

“But you’ll be gone by then,” Naomi said. Joey had gotten a deal on a Christmas Caribbean cruise.

“That’s why we’re having
our
Christmas a couple weeks early.” She turned a page and gasped. “Divine.”

Christmas. Naomi had a problem with Christian holidays, reeking, as they did, of sanctimony, self-sacrifice, and virgins. A week after that last time she and Clair made love—she didn’t yet know she was pregnant—Clair
told her without tears or apology or ambivalence that he was leaving UVM for Catholic University and becoming a priest. She was shocked silent as he blathered platitudes about his “profound calling” and “spiritual yearning.” Then he was gone. When she wrote the many letters pleading with him to at least talk on the phone—they
had
to talk, she insisted—he wrote back saying he couldn’t “tempt temptation.” That idiotic redundancy, in the end, softened the blow of losing him.

“Ham,” Joey declared, answering her own question. “The Pratts
always
have Christmas ham. Thanksgiving is Turkey. Easter’s leg of lamb. And Christmas is ham.”

“We don’t really eat ham,” Scanlon called in from the nursery.

“Nonsense,” Joey told him.

If Naomi’s own parents were here for the holidays, her father’s smell would soothe her: crushed dry leaves, apple cider, and sweet cigars. She hadn’t smelled him in nine years. She wished they could see her with her baby. In those weeks and months after Joshua was born, her father took her to the Catskills and quiet restaurants, and curled up with her under an afghan on the couch to watch movies on TV. His was the scent of solace and recovery.

“Don’t you have a raincoat?” Joey said.

The kitchen door stood open, and his smell was blowing in on the wet air.

With Sammy on her shoulder, Naomi went to the door as Clay stepped inside.

“I didn’t know if maybe you need some help with something in the yard or whatnot.”

“You’re soaked,” Naomi said. “You must be freezing.”

His face softened. “I’m good.”

“Could you get a towel?” Naomi asked Joey. “There’s some clean ones in the nursery.”

Sammy made a floundering grab for Clay’s nose, and Clay replied by twirling his finger in front of the baby’s face, producing a delighted shriek. That morning two weeks ago at Clay’s apartment, Sammy had been deeply asleep, she was certain, but as we know things from sounds and smells not consciously registered, was it possible, she wondered, that her son understood what he and Clay shared?

“Drop everything straight in the washer,” she said. “I’ll pass some of Scanlon’s sweats to you.”

His socks squished across the floor, wet prints leading to the laundry room. She hiked Sammy high on her shoulder, then squatted down to loosen Clay’s laces and draw out the tongues before setting the boots upside-down on the floor vent.

“Odiferous, oh my God,” Joey said, rushing back into the kitchen. “What in heaven’s name?” She sniffed her wrists, one after the other, and when Naomi stood up, she knew that Joey had gotten into her work at the organ. She was wearing the latest frog-juice prototype.

“I’m still developing it,” Naomi said. “It’s a long way off.”

“It’s heavenly. Don’t change a thing.”

Although pleased by her reaction, Naomi said, “Give it half an hour. It crashes.” She hadn’t been able to subdue the base note through the finish. The spearmint and fig were lovely for a start, and the frog juice gave the fragrance a tremendously frank authority, so honest and raw it drew you closer with the promise of revelation. But as the top notes dried down, the base became corrupted—a urine smell at the throat and the sides of the tongue, like eating kidneys improperly rinsed.

She got clothes for Clay, and he came back into the kitchen in fleece pants bunched up around his ankles; the rag socks, outdoorsy on Scanlon, looked preppy on him. The NYU sweatshirt hung off his shoulders. To be fair, it was even a little big on Scanlon. There were no pockets in the pants and Clay didn’t know what to do with his hands—resting them on his hips, touching the counter, then leaning on the stove.

“Smell me,” Joey said, thrusting her wrist under her son’s nose as he came into the kitchen. “Your wife is Aphrodite herself.”

“It’s very nice,” he said, leaning toward her tentatively.

“Ugh,” she groaned. “It’s irresistible.” She feigned a swoon in the doorway as only a toothpick-thin senior citizen in tight black jeans and spike heels can. “Ravage me,” she said to Scanlon, disturbingly.

“Would you like some tea?” Naomi asked Clay. “Anyone else? Joey?”

“Mountain Dew,” Clay said.

The four of them sat at the kitchen table—Scanlon and Naomi with mint tea, Joey with a white Russian, Clay with tap water—as the washer chugged on the other side of the door.

“I heard you talking to that newspaper editor,” Joey said to Scanlon. “Big to-dos with the anarchists?”

Clay shot a look across the table at Scanlon.

“No, no,” Scanlon said, rubbing his chin on his shoulder like he always
did when he was stalling for time in which to formulate a lie. “I was thinking about an article on the secessionists. But I’m backing away from them now.”

This was the first Naomi had heard of that. Although she’d kept her distance from Scanlon, she passed close enough every day to check for Sequoia’s scent. He’d seen her but hadn’t fucked her again.

“I’m just not sure there’s anything there for me.” Beneath the table, Scanlon laid his stockinged foot on top of Naomi’s. He smiled at her, but there was darkness behind it—desperation or fear. They might never cross the void that had opened up between them. “I should probably focus more on theory. More scholarly work.”

He rubbed her ankle with the instep of his foot, and she didn’t pull away.

“Is your family local,” Joey asked Clay, “or on the other side of the world like mine?”

“My mom moved down to Crescent City.”

“California border,” Scanlon told his mother.

“You’re going down for Christmas, I hope,” Joey said.

“Supposed to. But my ride fell through.”

“Unacceptable,” Joey said. “You should be with family. Isn’t there a bus?”

“No, I’m …” He shook his head.

“We could give you money for bus fare,” Naomi offered.

“Thanks, but—”

“A loan,” Naomi clarified. “An advance on yard work.”

“She lives with her sister’s family down there. Them and I don’t get on.” He finished his water.

“Then join us,” Scanlon said. “We’re having a pre-Christmas dinner. Tons of ham, right, Mom?”

Naomi curled her big toe into the bottom of Scanlon’s foot.

“Always plenty of ham,” Joey said. “And Naomi? Add coffee cake to the list. You know how Scanlon loves Entenmann’s on Christmas morning.”

She’d never once seen Scanlon eat coffee cake.

Suddenly, filling their view out the front window, a pink motor home the size of a yacht eased to the curb and glided to a stop. Geoff was sitting in the passenger seat, and as the driver swiveled her captain’s chair and stood, Scanlon uttered, “Bitch Kitty.”

He rose from the table as Joey sniffed her wrist, horrified, and Naomi
could smell it too: the frog-urine aftertaste. Joey jumped up and scoured her skin at the kitchen sink, and Scanlon was striding down the driveway toward the RV before Naomi realized with a thud in her heart that the stockinged foot under the table was still caressing her.

That night, Trinity answered the door naked. Her dreads were gathered in an elastic band at the top of her head, like a pineapple, and with one hand draped over the doorknob, she had the mellow ease of her mother.

Sequoia peeked around from the kitchen and, when she saw it was Scanlon, came running and threw her arms around him. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” she sang out, kissing him up and down his face and squeezing him tight. She was wearing a cotton Japanese robe and as she held the embrace, the warm pillows of her breasts pushed into his chest, emptying out his lungs.