T. Boyle - A Friend of the Earth

Stealthily, Tierwater slipped the IV from his arm. His thoughts, at this juncture, were uncomplicated. He was getting out of here, that's all he knew, vacating this place, sidestepping the emaciated arm of the law and making his way to his daughter, his wife, the outraged and militant cadre of E. F! Lawyers who would make everything right. And the reporters too-don't forget them. They had to hear about this, about the desecration of the forest, the complicity of the sheriff and the brutality of Boehringer and Butts, and he did want to preach, yes, he did-preach, proclaim and testify. His feet were on the floor, the papery hospital gown rustling at his shoulders, And where were his clothes-his wallet, his keys, his belt? They took those things away from you in jail, that much he knew, but were they as scrupulous at the hospital?

Across the room to the closet. Nothing there. The bathroom. Easing the door shut, one eye on Deputy Sheets, the whir of the fan cyclonic, and he was sure the noise of it would rouse his jailer-Just taking a leak, officer, and I suppose you re going to tell me that's against the law too — but no, Sheets slept on. In his gown, on silent feet, Tierwater vacated the bathroom, slipped past the innocuous lump of creased and pleated matter that was the deputy and out into the corridor. Lie was dimly aware of adding yet another offense to the list Sheets had recited for him, but the great hardwood forests of the East and Midwest had been decimated by men like Sheriff Bob Hicks and Boehringer and their ilk, and the redwoods and Douglas firs were going fast-this was no time for indecision.

The corridor was deserted. Cadaverous light, eternally fluorescent-nobody could look healthy here. His powers of observation told him he was on the second floor, judging from the view to the middle reaches of the trees just beyond the windows at the far end of the hall, and he understood-from the movies, primarily, or maybe exclusively-that the elevator would be a mistake. Nurses, orderlies, gurneys transporting the near-dead and partially alive, anxious relatives and loved ones, interns, candy stripers — they'd all be packed into that elevator, and all wondering aloud about his bare feet and bare legs and the disposable paper gown that left his rear exposed. And that was another thing-what had become of the diapers? The thought shrank him. He pictured the blocky nurse cutting the things of of him, her nose wrinkled in disgust, and then he changed channels and headed down the corridor, looking for the stairwell.

Twice he had to duck into occupied rooms — a subterranean light, tubes, hoses. The electric winking eyes of the machines that took note of every fluctuation and discharge-to avoid detection by prowling nurses. No one seemed to notice. They were busy with their tubes and monitors, busy trying to breathe, a collection of tired old beaks and chins grimly relaxing into death — or so he imagined, secreted behind the door as the nurses soft-stepped up the hallway. Then, a cold draft playing off his genitals, he flung open the door marked STAIRWELL and plunged through it..

In the process, he startled a morose-looking woman sneaking a smoke, but she dropped her eyes and never said a word, and the stairs vibrated under his feet. He cracked the door on the ground floor — early yet, very early, but there was more traffic here — and waited for the golden moment when everybody seemed to disappear simultaneously through separate doorways. Freedom glowed in the glass panels of the door at the main entrance, just past the gift shop and reception desk. What was it-fifty feet, seventy-five? Now or never. He pinched the gown closed behind him and made for the door, deaf to the startled cries of the two women at the desk (young nursey types, with hamburger faces and plasticized hair, and Sir! T hey cried; Sir! Can I help you, sir?), T he sweet, fresh, as-yet-uncorrupted Oregon air in his face and an endless field of scrub and weed heaving into view just beyond the dead expanse of the parking lot.

If this were a movie, he was thinking — and his every move to this point had been dictated by what he'd witnessed repeatedly on the big screen-he would slip into a late-model sports sedan, punch the ignition with a screwdriver, hotwire the thing and be gone in a glorious roil of smoke and gravel. Or the heroine, looking a lot like Andrea, with a scoop neckline and killer brassiere, would at that moment wheel up to the curb and he'd say, Let's move it. Or Let's rock and roll. Isn't that what they said in every definable moment of heroic duress? But this was no movie, and he had no script. In the end, he had to settle for making his way on all fours through the briars and poison oak, awaiting the inevitable clash of sirens and uproar of excited voices.

(How long was I out there-at large, that is? Let me tell you, I don't know, but it was the longest better part of a morning I ever spent in my life. And then it was the dogs- or dog — and the humiliation of that on top of the concrete and the diapers and the tight shit-eating smirks of the Fred-dies and their sledgehammering minions. I gave myself up. Of course I did. How far was I going to get in a hospital gown?) Tierwater had plenty of time to nurse his grievances and contemplate the inadvisability — the sheer unreconstructed foolishness, the howling idiocy-of what he'd done that morning in extricating himself from the personal jurisdiction of Deputy Sheets and, by extension, the Josephine County Sheriff's Department. He sat there in the heavy brush, not five hundred yards from the hospital entrance, scraped and begrimed, his feet bleeding in half a dozen places, the paper gown bunched up around his hips, thinking of what they would do to him now, on top of everything else. If he'd been tentative two nights ago in the fastness of the Siskiyou and purely outraged when they went after his daughter, now he was almost contrite. Almost. But not quite. They'd humiliated him and terrorized his wife and daughter — there was no coming back from that.

He listened to the wail of the sirens in the distance, and, more immediately, to the songbirds in the trees and the insects in the grass. His breathing slowed. After a while, the sun burned through the early-morning haze and warmed him. He laid his head back in the cradle of his hands and became an observer, for lack of anything better to do. The tracery of the plants-saxifrage, corn lily, goldenrod-stood illuminated against the sky, every leaf and stem trembling with animate life. Grasshoppers, moths, ants, beetles, spiders, they were the gazelles here and the lions, prowling a miniature veldt that was plenty big enough for them-at least until the hospital needed a new wing or a developer threw up a strip mall. He tried not to think about mites, chiggers, ticks, though he itched in every part and scratched till his flesh was raw and 'his fingernails bloody. He had no plan. He was here, couched in the bushes, instead of sitting up in bed and addressing a plate of eggs or waffles while CNN droned on about Polish Solidarity or the turmoil in Iran, but why? Because he had to do something, anything-he couldn't just roll over and become their whipping boy. Could he?

For a long while-hours, it seemed — there were the dis-tant sights and sounds of confusion emanating from the front of the hospital. The clash of sirens, raised voices, a flurry of activity centering on two police cruisers. It wasn't until the K-9 Corps arrived, and the first eager lusty deep-chested woofs of the police dog began to ring out over the scrub, that Tierwater developed a plan. He wasn't about to let the dog come careening through the bushes to take hold of his ankle and drag him thrashing out into the open, where the local reporter would snap action shots of his flailing legs and unclothed buttocks for the edification of the local timber families. No way. It simply wasn't a viable scenario. Beyond that, he was hungry, thirsty, sunburned, fed up. He'd made his point. Enough was enough. He stood up and waved his arms. "Over here!" He shouted.