T. Boyle - A Friend of the Earth

No lights on in the house, no dogs, sleeping or otherwise. Tierwater tried the door at the back of the garage, barely a creak of the hinges, and then he was inside. The pinkish glow of the flashlight revealed three cars, and what was this — a Lexus? Two Lexuses-Lexi-one silver, one black, his and hers. And some sort of sportscar, an old Jaguar, it looked like, big wire wheels, running boards-lovingly, as they say, restored. Imagine that-imagine Judge Duermer, robeless, a porkpie cap pulled down over his fat brow, wedged into the puny leather seat of the roadster, Sunday afternoon, maaaaarrrrrr, hi, judge, and a safe sweet taste of the bohemian life to you too. But Tierwater wasn't there to imagine things, and it took him less than five minutes to locate the cars' crankcases, lovingly tap a few ounces of silicon carbide into each and close the hoods with a click as soft as the beat of a moth's wing.

There were lights on at the police station, some poor drone-Sheets, maybe it was Sheets-putting in his time by the telephone, waiting for the call from the old woman who'd lost her glasses or maybe the one with the raccoon in her kitchen. The town stood still. The rain fell. Tierwater could see his breath steaming in front of his face. He couldn't get at the hoods of the two cruisers parked out front of the place, but they hadn't thought to put locking caps on the gas tanks. It hurt him to have to settle for slashing the tires, jamming the locks with slivers of wood and pouring diatomaceous earth into the gas tanks, but there wasn't much more he could do, short of firebombing the station itself, and he didn't want to alert anybody to what was going down here, especially not Sheriff Bob Hicks. Because Sheriff Bob Hicks (wife, Estelle), of 17 Spruce Lane, was next on the list.

This was where things got tricky. Sheriff Bob Hicks lived outside of town, on a country road fringed with blackly glistening weeds and long-legged shrubs, no other house in sight, rainwater gurgling in the ditches and no place to pull over-at least no place where the car wouldn't be seen if anyone passed by. It was getting late, too-quarter past four by Tierwater's watch — and who knew what hour people around here got up to let the cat out, pour a cup of coffee and stare dreaming into the smoke of their first cigarette? Tier-water found the mailbox set out on the road, number 17, the house dark beyond it, and drove on by, looking for a turnout so he could double back, do what he had to do and head back to the bosom of his family. But the road wasn't cooperating. It seemed to get progressively narrower. And darker. And the rain was coming down harder now, raking the headlights in sheets so dense he could barely see the surface of the road.

For a minute he thought about giving it up-just getting out of there and back to the interstate before he got the car stuck in a ditch or wound up getting shot at or thrown in jail. What he was doing wasn't honorable, he knew that, and it wasn't stopping the logging or helping the cause in even the most marginal way — andrea was right: he should let it go. But he couldn't. What they'd done to him — the sheriff, the judge, Boehringer and Butts (and he'd like to pay them a visit too, but life was short and you couldn't settle every score) — was no different from what Johnny Taradash had done. Or tried to do. Just thinking about it made the blood come up in him: a year in jail, a year listening to Bill Driscoll moan in his sleep, a year torn out of his life like a chapter from a book. And for what? For what? When he saw a driveway emerge from the vegetation up on his left, he jerked the wheel and spun the car around, and so what if he took some stupid hick's mailbox with him?

The rain was blinding, absolutely, and where was the damn house anyway? Was that it up there? No. Just another bank of trees. He swiped at the moisture on the inside of the window with an impatient hand, fumbled with the defroster. And then he came around a bend in the road and saw a sight that shrank him right down to nothing: there was Sheriff Bob Hicks' mailbox, all right, illuminated in the thin stream of the headlights, but a long, flat, lucent object had been coughed up out of the night beside it. It might have been a low-slung billboard, a cutout, the fixed reflective side of a shed or trailer, but it wasn't: it was a police cruiser. Sheriff Bob Hicks' police cruiser. And Sheriff Bob Hicks, a long-jawed, white-faced apparition in a floppy hat, was frozen there at the wheel, as if in an overexposed photo.

Tierwater's first impulse was to slam on the brakes, but he resisted it: to stop was to invite disaster. Windshield wipers clapping, defroster roaring, tires spewing cascades of their own, the rental car crept innocuously past the driveway, Tier-water shrinking from the headlights that lit up the front seat like a stage — and would the sheriff be able to see the slashes of greasepaint beneath his eyes, the watchcap clinging to his scalp? Would he recognize him? Was he looking? Did he wear glasses? Were they fogged up? And what was the man doing up at this hour, anyway? Had he gotten a call from the station, Better get on down here, Chief some asshole's gone and slashed the tires on two of the squad cars, was that it?

Sheriff Bob Hicks could have turned either way on that road-he could have backed up the driveway and gone back to bed, for that matter — but he turned right, the headlights of the patrol car shooting off into the night and then swinging round to appear in Tierwater's rearview mirror. Heart in mouth, Tierwater snatched off the watchcap, cranked the window enough to wet it and used the rough acrylic weave to scrub the greasepaint from his face. He was doing, what, thirty, thirty-five miles an hour? Was that too fast? Too slow? Weren't you supposed to drive according to the conditions? The rain crashed down; the headlights closed on him.

For an instant, he thought of running-of flooring it and losing the bastard — but he dismissed the idea as soon as it came into his head. He didn't even know what kind of car he was driving — the cheapest compact, some Japanese piece of crap that wouldn't have outrun an old lady on a bicycle — and besides, nothing had happened yet. There was no reason to think he'd be pulled over. He just had to stay calm, that was all. But here were the headlights looming up in his mirror and then settling in behind him, moving along at the same excruciatingly slow pace that he was. His hands gripped the wheel as if it were the ejection lever of a flaming jet. He tried to project innocence through the set of his shoulders, the back of his head, his ears. He sped up ever so slightly.

The worst thing was Andrea. Or no, Sierra. How was he going to explain this to her? Out of jail a week and a half, and back behind bars already? He hadn't even attended a parent/teacher conference yet. And Chris Mattingly and all the rest of them-what were they going to think? He could see the headlines already, eco-hero tarnished; e. F.! Tire-slasher; tierwater a petty vandal. Then he had a vision of Lompoc, Judge Duermer, Fred: this time it wouldn't be prison camp. Oh, no: this time it would be a cell on a cell-block, gangs, rape, intimidation, level two at least, maybe worse. Violation of parole, in possession of burglary tools, breaking and entering, destruction of private and public property, use of an alias in the commission of a crime- But then a miracle happened. Slowly, with all the prudence and slow, safe, peace-officerly care in the world, Sheriff Bob Hicks swung the cruiser out to the left and for the smallest fraction of a moment pulled up even with Tierwater before easing in ahead of him. Through two rain-scrawled side windows and the intermediary space of the rain-thick night, Tierwater caught a glimpse of the man himself, the incurious eyes and pale bloated face that was like something unearthed from the ground, the quickest exchange of hazy early-morning looks, and then the sheriff was a pair of taillights receding in the gloom.