T. Boyle - A Friend of the Earth

"It's all set," Andrea said. "The DA-he's new to the job, a man by the name of Horner, a younger guy? — He understands that all this arose out of a peaceable demonstration and that you were just trying to protect your daughter-"

"How long?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean-how much time do I have to do?"

She looked away, fussed with her hair. "Six months," she said. "To a year. But, listen, I get off with probation only — and we get Sierra back. That's the important thing. I mean, isn't it?"

At first he wouldn't listen. Wouldn't even consider it. Give himself up? Go to jail? For what? This wasn't Nazi Germany, was it? This wasn't Pol Pot's Cambodia. Jail? He was outraged. So outraged he'd punted a chair into the hot tub, hopped the railing and stalked off across the yard and into the trees. He sat out there in the woods all afternoon with the meat bees, each a perfect replica of the one that had done Jane in, turning it over in his mind. He had a yellow pine for a back rest, and he crossed his outstretched legs at the ankles, brought back down to earth-no more cloud-gazing today. He studied his clasped hands, the scatter of pine cones, the carpenter ants scaling his boots. Every few minutes, as the sun fell through the trees and the ravens called and the chipmunks flew across the duff like skaters on a pond, a yellow jacket would land on his exposed forearms or the numb monument of his face-not to sting, but to taste, to see if he was indeed made of meat, rent meat, meat sweet with the taste of fresh blood. Finally, at cocktail hour, when all the trees were striped with pale bands of sunlight and the birds began to hurtle through the branches in their prenocturnal frenzy, he got up, brushed himself off and ambled back to the house.

Andrea was sitting at the kitchen table with Sierra, both of them intent on the fashion magazines she'd brought back with her from the world below. There was something in the microwave, revolving endlessly-macaroni and cheese, from the smell of it. Three places were set at the table, and a bowl of salad, garnished with slices of tomato and avocado, stood on the counter. Tierwater said nothing, aside from a grunt of acknowledgment in response to Andrea's muted greeting, but went straight to the liquor cabinet and poured two tall vodka-tonics with a squeeze of lime. He took a long swallow from the nearest one, then crossed the room and handed the other to his wife. "Okay," he said. "Okay, you're right."

Sierra was absorbed in the page in front of her, gloss and color, some band, some actress, some model. Without looking up, she said, "About what?"

Andrea signaled him with her eyes. "Nothing, honey," he said automatically, and then he wandered out onto the deck, leaving the sliding door ajar behind him. A moment later, Andrea joined him, drink in hand. He turned to watch her as she slid the door closed.

"Good, Ty," she said, "it's for the best. We can get out from under all this."

He dropped his eyelids, shrugged, felt the sting of the ice as he lifted the drink to his lips.

She was in his arms, hugging him, her face pressed to his. "But you haven't heard the best part yet, and this is great, you're going to love this-"

"Sure," he said, pushing away from her and stepping back to the edge of the deck, "I'll bet. But don't tell me: you're going to bake me cookies every week while I'm in jail, right? You're going to knit me a sweater for those frosty nights on the cellblock when the sons of bitches won't turn the heat on-"

Her face was cold. "It isn't fumy, Ty. This is the best we can do, and we're going to make the most of it. When we give ourselves up its going to make the news coast to coast."

He said nothing. He didn't know where this was leading, but he didn't like it.

"Get ready," she said, and now she was animated, all right, effervescent, lit up like a self-contained power source, the three-hundred-watt smile and radar eyes. "You remember my great-grandfather?"

"Never met him."

"I mean, his story?"

He remembered. She was the great-granddaughter of Joseph Knowles, one of the archetypal eco-nuts. On a gray spring day in 1913, in the Maine woods, he did a striptease for a gaggle of reporters, emptying his pockets, setting aside his watch and wallet and penknife, neatly folding his jacket, vest, trousers and shirt, until finally he was down to his long underwear. Ultimately, he shed that too, to stand pale and naked before them. He then reiterated the credo that had drawn the journalists in the first place-that nature was to be preserved for its own sake as the nurturer of mankind — and plunged into the woods to live off the land. Two months later, hard and brown and considerably thinner, not to mention chewed, sucked and drained by every biting insect in the county, he emerged at the same spot to an even larger crowd and proclaimed that his God was the wilderness and his church the church of the forest. "No," Tierwater said. "You've got to be kidding. Tell me you're kidding."

There was the world, there were the trees, there was his wife. The light was perfect, held in that fragile moment between light and dark, the highest crowns of the trees on the ridge behind them on fire with it. She came to him again, and all he could see were her eyes and her lips, her glowing lips, her red, rich, persuasive lips. They kissed. He held her. The sun faded from the trees. "Think of it, Ty," she whispered, "think of the statement we'll make."

Tierwater had never been good with crowds. Crowds made him nervous; crowds made him think of the degradation of the planet; crowds showed him what humanity was, and he didn't like what he saw. This crowd, the one he, Andrea and Teo were the current focus of, must have consisted of a hundred or more. There was a good contingent of E. F.I ers out there, conspicuous in their red berets and the power-red T-shirts of the clan, thirty or forty of them, dispersed through the crowd like poppies in a field. You couldn't miss them. They were there to provide moral support — and to mob Tier-water and Andrea if any law-enforcement types showed up, in uniform or otherwise. The general public was in attendance too, at Andrea's express invitation-journalists, mostly, turned out in two-hundred-dollar hiking boots, pressed jeans and disc sunglasses in sixteen different earth-annihilating colors, as well as a scattering of the curious, the nearsighted and the bored. The day was golden. The mountains lay all around them, folded into one another like ripples in meringue. Teo had given his speech, and Andrea had given hers. There was nothing left now but to get to it.

Tierwater eased himself down on a section of wind-smoothed rock and began unlacing his boots; Andrea, barelegged in an airy dress the color of salt-water taffy, shucked off a pair of beaded moccasins. There was no wind, and the sun stood directly overhead, hot on his shoulders and the back of his neck. He gazed out over the mountains, his heart pounding, embarrassed already — and how had he ever let her talk him into this, one? — and then he glanced up at Andrea. She was staring placidly at the onlookers, making eye contact with one after another of them, milking the moment for all it was worth. Tierwater stood abruptly. The quicker they got this over with, the better, that was his thinking, and he unbuckled his belt, unzipped his pants, and stepped out of them, one leg at a time.

No one said a word, the whole crowd holding its breath. Tierwater was in good shape from all that hiking and his nighttime activities, six one, a hundred eighty pounds, too skinny in the legs, maybe — and he hated showing off his legs in public, and his feet too — but all in all, a fair match to play Adam to Andrea's Eve. He folded up his pants and handed them to Teo (who, incidentally, was dressed all in white, in a muscle shirt, shorts and sandals, like some sort of priest of the Movement). Everyone was staring at him, and he did his best to stare back, but then Andrea reached behind her for the zipper to her dress, and a hundred pairs of eyes went to her. He watched her arms bow out as she worked the zipper down to the base of her spine, and then the big hands come up and pull the dress over her head with a quick shake of her perfect hair, which fell perfectly into place. She was wearing crimson underwear — the subject of intense discussion that morning at breakfast, Tierwater fiercely opposed to it, Teo all for it — and the cups of her brassiere, right over the nipples, were imprinted with the raised black fist of the Movement. A smile for the crowd, and then she handed the dress to Teo. Defeated, feeling more foolish and more enraged by the moment, Tierwater tore off his shirt, dropped his briefs-his plain white briefs, $3. 99 A pair at J. C. Penney — and stood there naked for all the world to see.