T. Boyle - Drop City

“You know Harmony,” Sky Dog said. “He's got a kiln set up outside the bus and he says he's experimenting with some things and he's not ready to come upriver yet, at least that's what he told me and Dale. Plus the Bug is broken down.”

“He ordered a new fuel pump for it,” Verbie put in. “From this place in Anchorage.”

Norm dug his fingers into his beard, slid the glasses back up his nose. “And Lydia?”

To this point, Joe Bosky had been subdued, his dig at the gold situation the only thing out of his mouth all evening. He'd been locked behind the wrap of his silver shades since morning, stoned on a whole variety of things. When the hot chocolate went round he'd shuffled unsteadily to the plane and came back with a bottle of Hudson Bay rum and set it on the table, and a couple of people followed his example and spiked their chocolate with it. He cleared his throat in response to Norm's question and leaned over to spit in the dirt before bringing the solidity of his face back to the table. “She's in Fairbanks,” he said.

“Fairbanks?”

A murmur went round the table. If it was true, this was disturbing news, evidence of their first defection, the first betrayal of the ideal. People eyed one another up and down the table-who was next? Where would it end? Was the whole thing going to come tumbling down now? Was that what this meant? Marco slouched over his plate. For the moment, at least, he was too tired to care.

“What do you mean, Fairbanks?”

Joe Bosky's voice was thick in his throat. “I got her a job at this place I know. A saloon. She's going to be a dancer.”

And now Verbie: “Only till winter, though, is what she told me. To get some money together, for all of us-she's doing it for all of us-and then she's going to come back to the fold. That's a promise, she said-tell them that's a promise.”

“And if any of you other girls are interested,” Bosky said, and here he turned to Star and fixed his null gaze on her, “I can arrange it, because Christ knows they are starved for women up here. And Lydia. I mean, she's a natural, with that body she's got on her-”

“You mean topless, right?” Maya said.

“Right down to her G-string, honey, because full frontal nudity is still against the law in this state, but I tell you she's going to take in more tips a night than you people'll get in a month out of welfare or food stamps or whatever it is you're on.”

Everyone looked to Norm, whether they were conscious of it or not. And Norm, at the head of the table, hair dangling from the cincture of his headband, the cowbell like a cheese grater hung round his neck, set down his cup of chocolate and licked his mustache till all the sweet residuum was gone. “All right,” he said finally. “Cool. I mean, we can live with that, right, people? Lydia's going to show off what she was born with and make a little cash for Drop City in the bargain, and where's the problem with that?”

Verbie's voice came back at him like a whipcrack. “It's exploitation.”

“Exploitation of what?”

“Of the female body. It's sexist. I mean, I don't see any of you men up there dancing in your jockstraps or whatever-”

“Only because they didn't ask,” Norm said, and people were laughing now, avowals going up and down the table, and then Sky Dog said he'd do it in a heartbeat.

“Oh, yeah,” Verbie shot back. “Then why don't you do it now? Why not get up on the table and give us something to look at, come on, let's see what you got, big boy, come on-”

Sky Dog rose unsteadily from his seat and began undoing the buttons of his shirt while the catcalls rang out, but once he got his shirt off, he seemed to lose track of what he was doing-gone into the wild blue yonder-and he sat back down again.

“Chicken,” Merry said.

“See, what'd I tell you?” Verbie said.

And then Premstar, propped up beside Norm like a painted mannequin, Premstar the beauty queen who was more worried about her nails and her lipstick and her eyeliner than about anything that could possibly go down at Drop City, past or present, entered the conversation for the first time all night. “What about our treats?” she demanded. “All the things we ordered from Pan, I mean. Did everybody forget, or what?”

That was the unfortunate moment Ronnie chose to come bobbing across the field from his tent, the sun firing the threads of his hair, his torso riding over his hips as if he were walking a treadmill, and the table fell momentarily silent to watch his progress. Everyone was thinking the same thing. Pan had been crashed in his tent all this time, out of sight, out of mind, but the boat had come in with Verbie and Sky Dog and Dale, strange cargo indeed, and the windows for the meeting house and the three prospective cabins were there, uncracked and true, and the cans of kerosene and the bar oil and blades for the saws, but nothing else. No candy bars. No underarm deodorant. No books or magazines or tubes of suntan lotion. And if they weren't in the plane and they weren't in the boat, then where were they?

“Hey, Dale,” Sky Dog said, trying to get it going again, “remember that shit they tried to palm off on us in, where was it, Carmacks, in that roadhouse? _Moose__burger they called it?” But nobody was listening. All eyes were on Pan as he shuffled up to the table, tucking in his shirt and swatting absently at mosquitoes. Even Freak lifted his head from the dirt to give him a look of appraisal. The smoke drifted. The moment held.

“Hey, what's happening,” Ronnie said, leaning over Marco's shoulder to peer into the depths of the nearest pot. “Am I too late for dinner?”

At first, he tried to deny everything, squeezing himself in on the bench between Star and Joe Bosky and scraping what he could out of the bottom of the pot, all the while mounding it up on the first plate that came to hand, and never mind that it had already been used, he wasn't fussy. He was wearing his glad-to-be-here look, all smiles and dancing eyes, and he'd put a little effort into his clothes too, his denim shirt clean and maybe even pressed and what looked to be a new bandanna wrapped round his head. He found a fork, wiped it on his jeans, and began to feed the hardened dregs of rice into his mouth, too busy eating to address the issue of Drop City's trust and the two-column shopping list he'd wrapped round the wad of bills everybody had thrust on him five days ago. Marco studied the side of his head, the sparse thread of his sideburns tapering down into the sparser beard, the wad of muscle working in his jaw, but Ronnie was making eye contact with no one, least of all Premstar, who'd just looked directly at him and said, “So where's our stuff?”

Now she repeated herself, and Reba, the hunt in her eyes, said, “Yeah, _Pan,__ what's the deal? Are you going tell me you forgot, or what?”

If Ronnie was hoping it would blow by him, he was going to be disappointed, Marco could see that. He hadn't given him any money himself-he'd been too busy to think of needing or wanting anything-but Star had, and that was enough to involve him right there, more than enough. To this point, Pan had been fairly innocuous, shying away from the construction or anything that smacked of real work, maybe, but taking charge of the boat and the drift net Norm's uncle had left behind and assiduously drilling holes in anything that moved out along the river, and that was meat nobody else was going to go and get, at least not till the cabins were up anyway. He's doing his own thing, that's what Star said whenever his name came up in relation to the work details Alfredo was forever trying to organize-the latrine crew, the bark-stripping crew, the wood-splitters and sod-cutters-and the way she defended him was an irritant, certainly, but Marco wasn't jealous of him, or not that he would admit. _Of course I love him,__ Star had insisted, _but like a brother, like my brother Sam, and no, we never really slept together, or not in any way that really meant anything-__