Lilac Mines (27 page)

When everyone is home, the church is too crowded. Jody and Imogen bicker; somehow the subject of Petra always comes up. And then she comes up literally, smiling in a doorway, spilling an armful of groceries onto the kitchen counter.

“Brie?” Jody says. “We can't afford brie.”

“How else am I supposed to make
quiche au fromage?”
Petra asks. She is 25 years old, but Jody has decided that college girls don't age the same way other people do. Jody remembers her mother at what must have been the same age: a flurry of efficient hands, chopping carrots, stuffing small limbs into winter coats. Mrs. Clatterbuck kept her hair under a scarf. She lived off leftovers—chicken necks and potato skins and reused bacon grease—and she looked like it: pieced together but undeniably useful. Petra, on the other hand, still opens her eyes wide when she asks questions, still giggles, still spends slow mornings braiding her buttery hair.

Nine people live in the church. A couple have left. Marilyn took a job as a professor up north in Washington, and Emily left after she and Essie broke up. In Emily's absence, Essie has blossomed into a real person. She revamped the chore chart and struck up correspondence with other women's groups in Oregon and Massachusetts, bringing back tips on gardening and mediating fights. She was like a proud fisherwoman, presenting her catch and frying it up. In addition to Jennifer, there is Jennifer's daughter Christy, and a woman named Athena—not her real name, but one borrowed from a goddess she does a fairly poor job of emulating.

With the three mill workers home all day, the church is claustrophobic. Heat doesn't circulate well, and Jody spends her days moving from hot patches to icy ones. Christy toddles down the hall, away from her irritable mother, drooling on raw yams or handmade toys and howling when Jody or one of the other women trips over her. Linda brings home a cat. Petra complains because it is male, Jody complains because it eats and eats. The baby loves the cat, but the cat hates the baby.

“Think of it as a good thing,” Imogen says one Saturday night, over the too-loud chords of Athena's guitar. “It was a shame cutting down all those trees anyway. We've been wanting to be independent for a long time.” She unties her hair, and her Afro bursts out of its ponytail, glad to be home from the office.

“But we're not independent, we're just poor,” Jody says. She feels like she's always saying this. “You still work for Dr. Tracy, and he's still a pervert. How does
that
help our independence?”

“I know,” Imogen sighs. “But I'm the only one of us who has access to any kind of medicine. I like knowing I could score us some antibiotics in a pinch, you know?”

In the main room, an argument between Gapi and Linda competes with Athena's guitar. It's not long before Christy starts crying, and Jennifer yells at Gapi and Linda for upsetting her daughter.

“I can't take it anymore,” says Jody, retrieving her coat from the old refrigerator they use as a wardrobe. “I'm going out.”

“Can I come?” Imogen smiles, but she doesn't move. She takes in all the chaos of the colony like she's watching a sitcom: sort of silly, not especially like life, but worth tuning in for again and again.

Everyone is at Lou's. Everyone except those who are at Lilac's, who make a point of avoiding Lou's, especially in groups large enough to draw attention. There are still a handful of gay girls that the colony has not lured in and the town has not driven away, but Jody doesn't feel like seeing them tonight either. She keeps her coat and scarf on, and slides onto a stool at the end of Lou's recently refinished bar. Her hands are stiff from the cold. She rubs them together and wonders if the calluses will disappear or if work is now inseparable from her body.

She recognizes a few guys from the mill. They've clearly been drinking for hours, and she decides not to say hello. When someone taps her on the shoulder, she turns around reluctantly. But it's not a mill worker, it's Luke Twentyman, who Meg has worked for on and off over the years. He's wearing a brown suit and a tie, and stands very straight. The mill guys wear jeans and stoop to phantom logs.

“Sorry to bother you, ma'am,” Mr. Twentyman says. Jody has never liked being called “ma'am.” She's not sure if it makes her feel old or excessively female. “Aren't you a friend of Meg Almond's?”

Jody looks around. She's not sure how much Mr. Twentyman knows about Meg. “Yes,” she says slowly. Also, she and Imogen haven't seen much of Meg recently. It's hard to spend time with her and not fall into the halo of intensity that burns around her. Always something with a girl, some adventure, some injustice.

“Well, I just wanted to see how she was doing, what she was up to,” says Mr. Twentyman. “Thing is, she was supposed to do some work for me this week, but I haven't seen her. That's not like her.”

“No offense, sir, but that
is
like her. Lately, at least. She's gone off a few times on trips with—friends.”

“Sure, sure,” Mr. Twentyman nods. His dark eyes dart about the bar. He's around 50, Jody guesses; his tan skin is smooth over probing cheekbones, but his hair is almost white. “Too bad. I coulda used Meg this week—she's so organized, and I've got a lot of work to do.
Lot
of work,” he adds, and Jody can tell he wants to talk about what he's working on. She remembers Meg's stories. Mr. Twentyman always wanted to expose some corrupt local official or investigate some ancient mystery. Usually nothing came of it. He would move on to the next scandal, or people would get tired of talking to him.

“What sort of work're you doing?” Jody asks. She nods for the bartender to refill her glass.

“Interesting you should ask. I can tell from your hands and your manner of dress that you work at the mill, no?”

“Worked.”

“Right. Worked,” Mr. Twentyman says, narrowing his eyes. “I've got a scoop that would be of interest to you… to a lot of folks here. But that's exactly why I can't discuss it.”

“Okay then.” Jody wonders if the colony has quieted down for the night. She wants to crawl in bed beside Imogen. Their room—there are real rooms now, built by Jody—is one of the ones that overheats. She'll strip down to boxer shorts and slide her hands up Imogen's dark brown thighs, warm and waiting beneath the cotton sheet. Imogen has one of those bodies that thickens with age but doesn't lose its shape; she is a delicious second helping of herself.

“Well, I suppose I could let you in on it, but we can't talk here.” Mr. Twentyman takes Jody's arm like a gentleman and she follows him to the alley behind the bar. Jody feels the glassy eyes of the guys watching the old Indian in the suit and the woman with the blonde crew cut walking as if they're on their way to the dance floor. She clenches her free fist. The alley is gray with sludgy snow. The sky is clear and full of stars, as if pleading innocent to ever having inflicted foul weather on the town.

“It's freezing out here, sir. Tell me quick.”

“Inga clarkei,”
Mr. Twentyman says. At first Jody thinks he's talking about one of the Clarksons, a female maybe. After a dramatic pause, he continues, “Western sugar moth. Little bugger likes to hang around our trees. Feeds off the flowers that grow at the base of sugar pines, those little white wildflowers you see all over the mountain every spring. Sucks up that nectar like it's a dry martini. When they're drunk they curl up on some bit o' bark and snooze a while.”

“Right,” says Jody, still confused, “except I guess we're cutting down the trees, and now they're endangered, 'cause that's the only place they can ‘snooze.' “

“No!” Mr. Twentyman shouts triumphantly. He quickly lowers his voice. “No. That's the northern bark moth.
Inga lunaris.
It actually eats pine needles. But more importantly, it's only found in Oregon, Washington, and the southwestern part of Canada. I caught a couple of our little green moths myself, snuffed them out good. I figured they weren't too endangered yet. But then when I compared them with field guide photos of the northern bark moth, I discovered our boys,
inga clarkei,
weren't endangered at all.”

Snooty environmentalists still traipse through Jody's head. They all look like Petra in a lab coat. She pulls her jacket tight around her, and clarifies, “So they closed the mill to save a moth that doesn't even live here? That just has a twin here?”

“Bingo.”

Jody can hear faint music coming from Lilac's around the corner on Calla Boulevard. It's “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia.” “That's
great
news!” she says. “You just have to show the Clarksons, or the scientists or whoever, and they won't have to close the mill!”

“Not that easy, I'm afraid. Let me ask you something: Did you sign any papers when they canned you?”

“Yeah, some stuff to make sure we got our—what did they call it?—our severance pay.”

Mr. Twentyman shakes his head. “I won't bore you with the details, ma'am, but you're not getting your job back. None of you are. Truth is, the wood and the work are better and cheaper up in Oregon. The mill owners want to move there, but they knew if word got out, they'd have the whole town to answer to.”

Jody has never felt a kinship with the guys at the mill. She stays out of their way, and they respect her thick-for-a-girl biceps. But suddenly she wishes they were large enough to be a union shop. She wants to spill the news, to rally with them in the cold dark night. They'll storm the Clarksons' big house on the western edge of town, chop it down like a giant tree.

“And so what if it gets out now?” Jody asks.

“If it gets out now, it's just a story,” Mr. Twentyman says. “But what a story. I'm working on it.” He pats her on the shoulder.

Something about the gesture makes Jody ask, “Mr. Twentyman? You do a lot of research about things that happened in Lilac Mines, right?”

“Surely do.”

“Can I ask you a question? Have you ever heard of someone named Calla Holmes? Who might have been Lilac's friend?”

Mr. Twentyman looks at the black sky. His face twitches as he pages through mental files. “Calla Holmes? Oh, well, there's a Calla Hogan, of course. The Hogan newspaper family's girl. I've got a picture of all of them back at my office. Good-looking family, although the first wife—Calla's mother—died of scarlet fever, but quite a family. Newsmakers, literally. Wise not to seek their fortune in mining. Mining is so unreliable. But the news, that'll always be there, good or bad. And if there's no news, you just make something up!” He laughs. “They were the Clarksons of their day. Almost.”

“But you don't know whether Lilac and Calla knew each other?”

“I don't know that they didn't,” Mr. Twentyman says. “Hard to prove a negative.”

“Well, thanks.”

“You give me a call if you hear from Meg,” he says. “I'm listed.” He leaves, walking down the alley, looking over his shoulder in fear of spies behind trashcans, or in hopes of them.

Jody has just promised not to tell Mr. Twentyman's secret, but it seems that it is her secret, too. She is the one with a troublesome shoulder and torn-up hands. And no job. Maybe she could discuss the matter with one person, someone reliable. Maybe it's not too late. She slips back inside the bar and scans the room. A man she recognizes but doesn't know well is kissing the old Bettie Page poster that hangs over the row of tall tables at the back of the bar. His friends are egging him on. He tongues the glass and sloshes beer. She keeps looking. Zeke Espey is hunched over an empty shot glass at the bar. She hopes he hasn't seen her. A couple of guys are here with their wives. They're the most likely to behave themselves, but Jody isn't sure what to do with them. Is she supposed to greet the wives as one of their husbands' co-workers or as a fellow female? Finally she spots Tom Barratucci sitting at one of the shorter tables near the front of the bar. Tom is part Indian, part Italian, part something else. A mix of dark things. He's sort of the de facto black man at the mill—the guys alternate between baffled reverence and overly barbed ribbing. And Jody, in turn, watches him from afar. They could never be friends—that would be asking for trouble—so
she
alternates between empathy and calculated distance. But tonight she says, “Hey Tom.”

He nods. He doesn't offer her the other chair at his table. There are two empty glasses in front of him, and she wonders if he's here with someone. “With” is ambiguous in Lilac Mines. You can go to a bar alone and find yourself with everyone you know. Tom's eyes are red beneath long lashes that Jody never got close enough to notice before. Curls of dark hair are matted against his forehead, like little Christy's hair when she wakes up from her nap. “What do you want, Clatterbuck?” he asks gruffly.

The baby-fine hairs on the back of Jody's neck act as antennae that sense hostility, people who are insulted by the mere presence of a dyke. The hairs have gotten coarser over the years, but they still know things before her brain does. She takes a step back from the table, but continues. “I heard something about the layoffs is all. About how the 'endangered species'…”

Tom's lips peel back, and she sees that his teeth are long and yellow. “You know who should be an endangered species, Clatterbuck?” He says her name like an epithet. “Fucking dykes. You think the Clarksons wanna stay in a town that's turning into a hippie commune? I know you live with them. You think folks like it that you're taking over the mill, bringing more and more of your hairy girlfriends there each year?”

Jody thinks about how she urged Linda and Essie to apply for work there, even as receptionists or bookkeepers. But they sided with Petra. Their environmental consciences would let them spend the money Jody bought home, but not actually
see
a tree slaughtered.