Everybody's Daughter (3 page)

“Next time—” She caught herself.
Please,
she thought,
please let there be a next time.

“Yes?” he prompted.

“The next time you don’t have to come in.”

“That sounds safe. Or better yet, why don’t you just wait by the road? I’ll slow the car down and open the door. You can jump in.”

Beamer nodded and smiled. “I’m willing.”

He grinned, positioned his crutches to walk around the car, then stopped. “So who was he?”

“Who?”

“The guy who took you to the dance.”

“A classmate. Nobody special.”

“Good.” He kissed her then, the first time. Beamer looked up after the kiss, a sweet, slow one, and saw her mother and Jenny waving in the doorway.

*

Andy’s father had been transferred to Grand River by the large company that owned the paper mill which dominated the town and emptied its treated waste into the river. “He’s the vice president in charge of judicious pollution,” Andy often joked. Beamer observed with detachment his parents’ and sisters’ joyful discovery of rural North Woods life—the lakes, the fishing, the skiing, the slow pace. She had seen it often—the newcomer’s initial delight, which slowly and surely gave way to boredom and frustration. Soon enough, she wagered to herself, they’ll be complaining about the cold, the summer bugs, the high food prices, the long, lonely winters. In two years they’ll be begging to go back to Boston.

Andy didn’t share his family’s enthusiasm. Uprooted from his lifelong home just a few weeks before the start of his senior year, he had developed a hard, angry resistance to the new environment. A philosophy of “I’ll do it, but I don’t have to like it” guided his involvement in the new life.

Beamer discovered three things that softened his unhappiness: his art, in which he often submerged himself, missing dates and other commitments; his family, especially the two younger sisters, who adored their only brother; and herself.

She was at first enormously flattered that this good-looking, intelligent, funny, transplanted easterner was attracted to her. And when school resumed she quietly relished the attention and hints of envy their relationship generated. She had dated, but never one boy steadily, and she quickly warmed to his nightly phone calls, the weekly dates, and the amusing, affectionate notes he often left in her school locker. A few weeks after they started dating, however, his youngest sister had let it slip that Andy had a girlfriend back home, a college freshman who wrote faithfully. “Her name’s Allison,” the other sister supplied, before digging into her half of a hot fudge sundae that Beamer had bought them after a chance meeting on the library steps.

Beamer wasn’t surprised. It explained in part his great distress at moving. She never raised the subject, told very few of her friends, and only once or twice grilled Kim and Julie, his sisters, for information about the distant Allison.

Andy had once overheard one of these conversations. After the girls had been chased away by his scowl, he had turned to Beamer. He had never mentioned Allison, but he knew Beamer knew about her.

“Don’t you mind?” he said.

“Mind what? That we skipped the party to babysit your sisters? Not too much.”

“That’s not what I mean. About Allison.”

Beamer held his hand and traced his fingers with her thumb. He had spent the afternoon working in the school studio, and specks of clay and glaze were rubbed into his hands. She looked at him and smiled. “No.”

Andy frowned. “Why not?”

“She’s a thousand miles away. I’m here.”

*

Andy parked the car alongside the store van. “I’m such a good boy,” he said. “Here it is, only nine-thirty and I’ve got you home safely.”

“That’s odd.”

“Nothing odd about it at all. You always want to leave the movie early and go home.”

“No, I mean that car. That’s Daryl and Sandra’s car. The orange Volvo.”

“Who are they?”

“Long-lost Woodies. Well, not really lost, none of them is, unfortunately. Even the wayward ones show up from time to time. Even though Daryl and Sandra live just a few miles on the other side of Grand River, they aren’t really close to the other Woodies anymore. But they belong just the same.”

Beamer and Andy got out of the car and walked around the building to the back door. They stepped into the entry and removed boots and wraps.

“Your family has the strangest friends,” said Andy.

“Let’s not get started on my parents’ friends again.”

“I was just—”

“You’re free to stay away from them, Andy. So don’t complain.”

“If I stay away from them, I stay away from you. Do you want that?”

Beamer kicked her boots into the pile by the sofa. She sat, crossed her legs, and warmed her toes in her hands, then looked at Andy.

“Of course not. Then I’d never get out of here.”

He frowned. “Is that all I am to you? A ride out of here on Saturday night?”

“Andy.” She picked up his hands in her own. “I was joking.”

“I’m not so sure.”

She kissed the back of his hands. “I was joking,” she repeated softly.

Andy moved closer on the sofa, but paused when the background murmur of Woodie voices heightened.

Beamer closed her eyes. “They don’t sound like they’re having fun tonight. Daryl must have them stirred up about something. He was always good at that.”

“What did Daryl do? Write the commune manifesto?”

“He was the administrator. Handled the business and all that. He and Sandra weren’t the first to leave the commune, but their going really hurt. Woodlands didn’t survive long without him. Everyone was pretty competent at growing things and making peanut butter, but nobody could understand the accounting. It sounds like they’re all in the store. With a little luck we can sneak upstairs and have the kitchen to ourselves.” She rose and pulled him up from the sofa. She laid a finger on his lips. “You can finish what you were about to do when we get upstairs.”

Beamer had just pushed open the door at the top of the stairway when her mother appeared at the bottom.

“Hello, Andy, Beamer. I suspected you two would leave that movie early. Didn’t I warn you that there were just a few too many dead bodies? Beamo, could I speak with you? Downstairs.”

Beamer looked at Andy and shrugged, then ran down the stairs.

Her mother had gone into the back room, where she was sitting motionless in the rocking chair, her hands clasped and resting on her knees. Beamer waited for her to look up from the floor.

“There’s some cake left. Your father and Jenny were somehow persuaded to leave a little for the two of you.”

“You called me down to talk about cake?”

“No. It would be better if Andy didn’t stay too late tonight.”

“No big deal. What’s up? Something to do with Daryl and Sandra? I saw their car.”

Her mother nodded. “Their daughters are sleeping in your room. You’ll need to use a sleeping bag for a few days, I’m afraid. Maybe in Johnny’s room. They’ll be staying here.”

“Why?”

Her mother rose and embraced Beamer. “Sandra’s in trouble. Someone’s been killed, and Sandra’s in trouble.”

Chapter 3

On Saturday morning Sandra had told Daryl that she was spending the night with her sister in St. Cloud. She had said goodbye to the children, put a small suitcase in the car, and driven away shortly before noon. Daryl hid behind the draperies and watched her leave, standing motionless and unresponsive to the squalling children until long after the car was out of sight. She hadn’t said why she was going.

The Monticello nuclear energy facility was a half-hour’s drive from Sandra’s sister’s home. Until recently, radioactive waste from the plant had been shipped out of state for storage. Now, however, there was a new waste containment tank at the plant. Because the facility was located in farm country near the Mississippi River, the unproven containment system was controversial. For months the plant had been the site of frequent demonstrations.

Sandra drove for three hours to her sister’s house without stopping, and that afternoon she and her sister met with another woman. The three left St. Cloud in the late afternoon and arrived at the plant just as the eastern sky began to darken. They parked directly in front of the main gate, got out of the car, removed their supplies from the trunk, and under the watchful eye of the single guard, who was already phoning a report of their presence, began a protest.

They poured blood-red paint over their bodies and on the snow. On the fence they hung a large sign saying NUCLEAR WASTE WASTES LIVES.
While Sandra’s companions chained themselves to the fence, she returned to the car. Her instructions were simple: connect the two wires that dangled from the steering column and enter a three-digit code on the small console taped under the dash. She did this, then locked the car and joined her sister and her friend. Just as the guard approached, Sandra chained herself to the fence.

The guard was irritated but civil. He had seen many protesters before. He wandered over to the car.

“Now this isn’t a good idea,” he said. “There are people inside the plant who are almost done working for the day, and they’ll want to leave and go home. So why don’t we just move this car and get on with business? You don’t want to stay out long in this cold, anyway.”

Sandra looked into the distance. A quarter-mile away, a freight train was coming into view, a low, dark snake crawling over the snow-covered grassland. She could feel the ground shake slightly as it grew closer. She turned to the guard. “We’ll stay as long as we want to stay. There’s a bomb in the car. It will go off if you start or tow the car.”

The guard peered inside. He tested the door, shaking the handle. “Bombs are a little extreme for you people, aren’t they?”

“We are doing what we must do,” said Sandra.

“So will we. Ladies, we will get a locksmith and open the car. We will get a bomb expert and defuse the bomb. We will get a hacksaw and cut you loose from the fence. We will get a deputy and put you in jail.”

“That will take time.”

“And that’s all you want—time for the television crews to get here from Minneapolis and put you on the evening news. I suppose you called them from the cafe down the road?”

The women didn’t speak. That was exactly what they had done.

“You protesters are all alike,” the guard said as he walked away from the car.

The explosion whipped Sandra and her friends against the fence. Shards and slivers and spikes of glass and metal scraped their faces and ripped at their clothing. When the air was still, Sandra opened her eyes and saw the guard on the ground. He was covered by smoking debris. Sandra saw no movement, no life at all in his body. She went limp in her chains.

The bomb was a small one, and they had never meant it to be detonated. “A deterrent,” Sandra had called it. “It will deter anyone from ending our protest until we are ready to go.”

As the medics carried Sandra to the ambulance, she covered her face with her hands and wept.

*

The Woodies responded to this crisis as they had to all others: those who were at the store stayed there, and those who were not came when they heard the news. Two things woke Beamer late the next morning, the sun shining through the curtainless windows of her brother’s room and the sound of her mother and Daniel and some others singing in the kitchen.
One of you crazies killed someone,
Beamer thought,
and all you can do is sing.

She unzipped the sleeping bag, climbed out, and stood for a moment in her T-shirt and underwear, looking at her sleeping brother. “Don’t wake up, little brother,” she whispered. “Big sis is rather indecent right now.” She thought she remembered a Dear Abby column about brothers and sisters sharing bedrooms. Abby had thought it was pretty sick, and asking for trouble.
I should dig that up and show it to Mom,
Beamer thought as she left the room, moving quickly across the hallway to avoid being spotted by any wandering Woodies. She quickly and quietly dressed in her room—Daryl’s children were still sleeping—then went into the kitchen.

Beamer nodded and mumbled greetings to everyone, took two of the rolls someone had brought, sipped from the glass of juice her mother handed her, then went downstairs to the store. Peter, Sue, and Jenny were seated by the wood stove. Beamer looked in the back room for her father but only found Maud and Jeffrey waxing their skis. Their ten-year-old daughter, Alissa, was asleep on a pile of coats. Beamer went back into the store.

“Where’s my dad?” she asked the others.

Peter rose and refilled everyone’s coffee mug from the pot on top of the stove. “He drove Daryl to St. Cloud. They’re going to post Sandra’s bond as soon as it’s set, then bring her home when they can.” Daryl had squandered his profits from the sale of Woodlands on a sauna and hot-tub business. For all his accounting skills, he had never made a success of it. Beamer didn’t ask, didn’t need to ask, who was providing the money for Sandra’s bond. When it came to their friends in need, her parents’ pocketbook was open and full. It was the sort of thing they liked to do.

Jenny motioned to Beamer to take an empty seat by the stove. Beamer shook her head and went outside. A wall of cold air hit her. She pulled her turtle-neck up to her chin, stretched her sweater down over her hands, and tucked her hands under her arms. The bright sun reflecting off the snow was blinding. Beamer closed her eyes and leaned against the giant fish. “My house is crawling with people, Wally. There are people in my room, my kitchen, my store. Probably someone is sleeping in the bathtub. And they all want something: a place to go, someone to listen, bail money, food. I could use a bomb myself.”

Her mother appeared at the door, carrying one of Daryl’s girls. “Bea, you really should put on a jacket when you go outside.”

“Gee, Mom, do I have one? You mean you haven’t given them all to some needy beggar?”