T. Boyle - The Harder They Come

He’d glanced up at her then, as if seeing her for the first time. His eyes were clear, a bright transparent blue that went so deep she could have been looking into the ocean and seeing no bottom to it at all. “For protection,” he said.

“From what?” And she couldn’t help herself: “Cougars?”

If he heard her, if he recognized she was making a joke, he never let on. “People,” he said, “motherfuckers, creeps, assholes. Cougars eat deer, people eat everything.”

“And they’re not going to eat you?”

He gave her a smile then — his version of a smile, anyway, the corners of his mouth lifting ever so subtly in acknowledgment — and started out the door, ducking his left shoulder automatically so as not to strike the lintel with the muzzle of his rifle. She wanted to call out to ask him if she should expect him for dinner, but checked herself — she wasn’t his mother. She wasn’t a nag either. And what he did, for as long as he was going to do it, didn’t matter to her. This was temporary. It was a week. Maybe it would go three weeks more. Or maybe. . but she didn’t want to think beyond that.

She went to the door and watched him stride to the cement-block wall and go up and over it as if it were nothing. Like Jackie Chan. Or the new James Bond, whatever his name was. And what was that martial arts thing called, where you just run right up a wall? Parkour . Adam was a master of that. Of course, he could have just strolled through the doorway his father had made, but he refused to — he wouldn’t acknowledge it, didn’t even seem to see it. If it was up to him he’d seal it up again, she knew that, but then it would be pretty inconvenient for her when she wanted to haul in a load of groceries or take the dog out for a walk, and what was she going to do, use the stepladder? Plus, how could you sell a house with no way in? And Sten intended to sell it, no matter how his son felt about it, and he’d taken her aside and told her as much. The house was in escrow and he didn’t want anything screwing up the deal — the buyer was a friend of his and Carolee’s who was taking the place as is, grandmother’s furniture and all, and he’d agreed to let Adam stay on till the end of the month. Her guess was that they needed the money to pay down the mortgage on the new place in Mendocino, which had ocean views, and ocean views were anything but cheap.

Crossing the yard herself now, Kutya trotting along behind to pause and pee and sniff at her ankles, she came through the doorway just in time to see Adam heading down the slope to the river. The sun glinted off his shaved head and sparked at the muzzle of the rifle, and then he was in the shadow of the trees and she lost him a moment before he reappeared on a bend in the path, moving fast, double time, always double time, as if somebody — or something — was after him.

She’d just got done with the dishes when her phone rang. Without thinking, she hit “talk” and put it to her ear. “Sara here,” she said, figuring it was one of her clients — or maybe somebody new. She was in the Yellow Pages, both in the phonebook and online, and she could never have too much work. The money was good and she worked hard for it, which was why she was never going to give another nickel to the feds, or what — the Franchise Tax Board, and what a joke that was.

“Sara?” The voice was a man’s, deep, a froggy baritone.

“Yes?”

“Sara Hovarty Jennings?”

It was right about then that she began to regret having answered, because what client — or potential client — would ask for her by her full name? “Yeah,” she said, and all the brass had gone out of her voice. “Who’s this?”

“This is Sergeant Brawley of the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department.” A pause to let that sink in. “And I’m calling to urge you to come in voluntarily to the Ukiah station and surrender your dog”—the rattle of a keyboard—“Kutya. Is that right? Kutya, isn’t it?”

Stupidly, she said, “Yes.”

“Let me apprise you that there is a warrant out for your arrest — for failure to appear — and that we have video evidence showing that you entered Animal Control with an accomplice at 2:35 p.m. on Saturday, August 10, and illegally removed your dog from quarantine. What do you have to say to that?”

“I’m quarantining him myself,” she said, feeling up against it now, more angry than scared.

Another pause. More rattling. “And where might that be?”

“I mailed a certificate of rabies vaccination to the court — what more do you want from me, blood?”

The voice, which had been deep, calm and blandly officious to this point, rose in pitch — and color, color too, as if any of this mattered to him, as if it was anything more than some idiotic imposture: “We want, or no, we require you to surrender your person and your animal immediately on penalty of—”

That was all she heard, because in the next moment she had the phone down on the kitchen floor and was grinding it underfoot — they could track you, track you anywhere, the phone like a homing device, like your own little flag of surrender. For a moment she was too angry to think, and if she just kept grinding the phone under her heel and if the plastic frame of it was gouging the linoleum floor Adam’s grandmother had kept up through all her failing years, well, she would worry about that later. At the moment, she couldn’t seem to catch her breath, she was so upset. She kept telling herself to calm down even as the dog, with his dog’s radar, sensed that something was amiss and began to whine, his nails tapping out an elaborate distress signal on the slick linoleum.

As soon as she’d had a chance to catch her breath she began to rethink things. Already she regretted smashing the phone. Yes, the number had been compromised, no doubt about that — obviously the police had hacked the phone records to get her cell number, but without a phone how would her clients reach her? How would she schedule appointments? How would she live? Even now people could be calling her — or the home phone, where they’d just get a message. Which she couldn’t receive and couldn’t answer. And if she didn’t call back, they’d just go to somebody else, and there went her business. She looked down at her hands and saw they were shaking.

She needed to go to the market for groceries — and to stop in at Radio Shack for a new phone, one of those cheap disposable things that came with a prepaid card. But she was in no condition to drive, not now. So she did the only thing she could think to do: clean. Cleaning always calmed her, the Zen of it, the mindlessness, take up a sponge and some Ajax and go deep. For the next two hours she did nothing but sweep, scrub and polish, rechanneling her energy into something productive. She wasn’t going to let them get to her, she was determined about that. Christabel was coming over for a nice dinner and they were going to celebrate, the United States Illegitimate Government of America be damned. She took out the trash and carried the recycling to the car. Retrieved the mop and cleaned and waxed the linoleum in the kitchen, though she’d just done it the day before, then soaked a sponge in bleach and ran it over the grout around the sink by way of eradicating the ugly black tendrils of mold there, working an old toothbrush over the problem spots till they disappeared. Next, she proceeded to the living room, where she took up the oriental rug and carried it outside to air it, flinging it high to drape over the wall, then went back in to sweep and wax the oak floor before turning to the bedrooms.

The house had two: the late grandmother’s, which was fussy and cluttered with keepsakes and bric-a-brac, the walls hung with corny pictures of anthropomorphized chicks and puppies and kittens, and Adam’s, which was where they’d been sleeping. His room was Spartan, nothing but the essentials, though she did find his bong, a couple of rolled-up Bob Marley and the Wailers posters and a handful of tie-dyed T-shirts tucked away in the back of his closet, along with a cardboard box of old video games and action movies. Typical stuff. Boys’ stuff. It made her smile. And that smile broke the spell. They couldn’t trace her — she could have answered that phone anywhere, could have been on a job, cruising along in her car, roaming the aisles of the food store, how would they know? Sergeant What’s-His-Face probably had a list of sixty people to call — and harass — and it was nothing to her. They’d never find her. The tools. The corporate tools of the U.S.I.G.A. who couldn’t begin to comprehend anything other than what their bosses dictated to them, and wasn’t that the way the Fascists took hold and the Communists too? Through ignorance and propaganda? Just keep the people in the dark and whatever you do don’t let them read the Constitution.