Wendy Hornsby - Telling Lies

“Was he a bomb expert?” I asked.

“Obviously not very expert. Art’s eternal address is the Mount Carmel Cemetery. The dumb shit.”

“Was he?”

“He should have studied more chemistry before he tried cooking explosives,” Jaime said, frowning. “Art went east after the acquittal, joined the Weather Underground. He always got his high from confrontation. We were just too tame for him.”

I pointed to the skinny young boy with masses of kinky red hair framing his narrow face. I can’t believe that’s Rod Peebles,” I said.

Jaime laughed. “Every time he comes up for re-election, he hopes everyone forgets he was there. For most of us, that isn’t too difficult, he was just a limpet. He was always around, but he never had much to contribute. Except money.”

“Look at Lucas,” I said. “He looks so young. I always thought he was ancient.”

“Age is relative.” Jaime smiled. “You used to think I was old, too.”

“Yeah, I did. I thought you were gorgeous, though.”

“Wish you had said so, somewhere along the way.”

I stood up to pace a little, trying to force down the lump gathering in my throat again. Most of these people had been so familiar to me, a sort of extended family. I hadn’t thought about most of them for a long time.

My parents’ house is a short uphill walk from the UC, Berkeley campus. My father teaches there. During the Peace Movement, Emily had run their two guest bedrooms like a hostel for Movement organizers. A lot of people, including everyone in Jaime’s snapshot, had found succor in those rooms at some point.

Mornings, when I still lived at home, I never knew who I might find in the hall waiting for a turn at the bathroom. I remember on more than one occasion taking my place in line behind the Reverend Lucas Slaughter – in the snapshot he was standing behind Aleda.

I used to wonder what Lucas slept in, because in the bath-room line he never wore anything except a towel sarong and a heavy crucifix, which lay in his thick mat of chest hair like a tiny Jesus sunning in tall grass. He taught me two verses of “Did My Savior Bleed” one morning while we waited for Daniel Berrigan to shave:

Alas! and did my Savior bleed?

And did my Sovereign die?

Would he devote that sacred head

For such a worm as I?

Was it for crimes that I have done,

He groaned upon the tree?

Amazing pity! Grace unknown!

And love beyond degree.

I don’t know whether our hymn singing made Berrigan shave any faster, but he came out laughing.

There was only one surviving person in the snapshot I hadn’t spoken with.

“What do you hear from Celeste Baldwin?” I asked.

“Nothing. You know who she married?”

“Yes.”

“So you know as much as I do,” he said. “I told you, I didn’t keep up. You were the newsperson. You should still have the contacts to reach her.”

“Possibly,” I said. I studied the faces in the faded photograph. “All I have now is a list. Can’t you tell me what I need to know? Were these people Emily’s friends? Her rivals? Her enemies?”

“It was so long ago, Maggot.” He turned the picture over. “Who remembers?”

I watched him for a moment. He was obviously uncomfortable and fighting my prodding. I didn’t want to make him hurt. I just wanted some truth.

I stood and stretched. “You know what I remember most about that time?” I asked.

“What?”

“The passion,” I said. “And not only passion for the cause. Remember Marcella, my mother’s cleaning lady?”

I think so.”

“She hated the years of the Movement in Berkeley. You know why?”

“Tell me.”

“Because of the love stains she had to bleach out of the sheets when Emily’s house guests left town again. You would all come back from a rally or teach-in or march so fired up the house seemed to shake with the leftover passion. There was always a terrific racket: hot debates, loud music, enormous amounts of food, lots of grass. Then, two by two, people would peel from the group and slip up the stairs. Sleep was impossible with all the headboard banging during the night.”

He smiled. “That was the best part.”

“So you do remember?”

“Passion I remember.”

“Passion can wear many faces.”

“So?”

“So, it would take a lot of passion to put a gun to an old friend’s head and pull the trigger.”

After breakfast, Jaimedrove me in his pickup into downtown Indio for a change of clothes. It was just after nine and the only place open was a western store called Trader Sam’s. I picked out some snug, button-front blue jeans, a white shirt, an Indian blanket-weave flannel jacket and a pair of natural cowhide boots, all from the marked-down shelves. When my MasterCard didn’t clear, Jaime put the clothes on his account.

“Some TV star you are,” he said, as we walked back out to his truck. “You broke?”

“Always,” I said. “My gigs are publicly funded.”

“Who’s paying for the trip to Belfast?”

“I don’t know and I won’t ask. As long as I have content control, I don’t care.”

“You’re serious?”

“I’m not as politically pure as Emily.”

Jaime laughed. “That’s okay by me. The way you look in those jeans, I’ll forgive damn near anything.”

I think I smiled before I left him to walk to the passenger side of the truck. He didn’t mean anything by the remark, just flexing. It was sweet.

I climbed into the truck and closed the door. In the few seconds it took for him to walk from the store, a shadow had come over Jaime. I reached across the seat and touched his arm.

“What’s on your mind?” I asked.

He sighed. “Life is fleeting.”

“It is.”

“Last time you and I really talked,” he said, “you were still a bratty little kid with freckles on your nose. You were so cute and so smart and I loved you to pieces. I no more than turn around, and here you are with a half-grown child of your own. Where is that little girl I knew?”

“Long gone, Jaime.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You are a sentimental old thing, aren’t you, Jaime?” I rolled down my window and leaned against the doorframe, letting the wind redo my hair as we drove back toward his house. “Soon as I get a check, I’ll pay you back. Thanks for everything. My own brother couldn’t have been more helpful.”

“Brother, huh?” He sighed wistfully, and I appreciated that. One time I had asked Emily how Jaime kissed, and she had said, “You’ll never find that out.” Maybe it was the way she said it. In a purely academic sense, I still wondered what sort of kisser he might be. As long as Emily was where she was, I would never find out.

“You never remarried,” I said.

He shook his head. “Emily is a tough act for any woman to follow.”

“Do you get lonely, living by yourself out here?”

“Sometimes,” he said. “I have friends. I’m busy. I feel useful. How about you?”

“I have Casey. I have a job.”

“Kids and jobs don’t warm the sheets at night.”

I may have blushed-my face felt hot. “My sheets are warm enough.”

“Yeah?”

I thought about it for a moment. “I went through the post-divorce crazies for a while.”

“Is that still called dating?”

“You’ve been there, huh?” I laughed. “It’s just one of the four phases of divorce. You know, denial, anger, slutting, celibacy.”

“Where are you now?” he asked.

“Phase four,” I said, trying to remember the last time I had been to bed with someone interesting. “I have no prospects and no time to pursue any.”