T. Boyle - A Friend of the Earth

And then came the day, OA vu, Andrea waiting for him in the parking lot, the little bag of his belongings, goodbye, Lompoc. He'd served out his sentence, and they unlocked the cage and let him go. Not in time to see his daughter cock the mortarboard down low over one gray, seriously committed eye and accept her degree, cum laude, in environmental science, but that was the way it was when you did the stupid things, the things that put you in their power, the things you swore you would never do again. That was what every prisoner told himself-I'll never do it again — but Tierwater didn't believe it. Not for a minute. He knew now, with every yearning, hating, bitter and terminally bored fiber of his being, why prison didn't reform anybody. Penitentiary. What a joke. The only thing you were penitent for was getting caught. And the more time you did, the more you wanted to strike back at the sons of bitches and make them wince, make them hurt the way you did. That was rehabilitation for you.

This time the car was a smooth black BMW-one of the pricey models, 740i, Andrea's car, and who'd bought it for her? "You did, Ty, and I love you for it. We needed something with a little class for pulling up at the curb when they've got the cameras going, you know? Anyway, I thought I'd surprise you. You like it, don't you?" He did. And this was déjà vu too, hammering the accelerator, the ocean, the wind, outdoors on the patio of the restaurant, waiters, a menu, real food, and then home to bed and sex. Only Sierra wasn't there this time-she was in Arizona, at Teo's Action Camp, undergoing a course of indoctrination in nonviolent protest, as if she hadn't already earned three Ph. D. 'S in it — and the sex wasn't there either. Oh, they took off their clothes, he and Andrea, and he built a monument to her body, the smell of her, the taste, her eyes and teeth, the sound of her voice, the simple unadulterated miracle of sitting at breakfast in a sun-struck kitchen and seeing her there across the table in her robe, but it was different. It was like Sandman said, reminiscing in the minutest sexual detail over his third wife and her multifarious betrayals, or maybe it was his fourth: What do you expect?

Tierwater kept his head down. He was a blind man given a pair of eyes, and he didn't want to look too hard for fear of going blind again. Andrea took the black BMW to work and he went out in the yard and dug holes and stuck plants in the ground. There was a pair of mallards in the swimming pool, and that pleased him — they'd been flying off in the spring and coming back every fall, Andrea told him — and the red-legged frogs splashed randily in the water while the mosquito fish pocked the surface with thin-lipped kisses. He saw Sandman a couple of times-he was living in Long Beach, working for a biotech firm, "That's where the money is, bro, and the future too" — but Andrea didn't exactly shine to the man, ex-con and violent offender that he was, and Tierwater let the relationship cool. Teo came back at the end of October, and Andrea seemed to fly south herself, emotionally anyway, and Tierwater was ready to get out the decoys and the shotgun and find out once and for all how things stood, but Sierra came back then too, and he got distracted.

For a month, he and his daughter held an ongoing reunion. They went to Disneyland and Magic Mountain, hiked the San Gabriels, the Santa Monicas and the Santa Susanas, ate out-every meal, every day — and saw A Doll's House ( "I'll never be like her") and The Misanthrope at a theater in Brentwood. She was grown up now, a woman, nearly the age Jane was when they'd first met. Everywhere they went, he watched the men watching her, and that made him feel strange and protective, all those doggy and envious eyes, men of all ages-grandfathers, even-craning their necks for a look at her in her clean-limbed beauty. What did she wear? Shorts, skirts, T-shirts, blouses made of silk or rayon, nothing especially provocative, no makeup, no nonsense, but she had a gift of beauty and every man who wasn't already dead responded to it. One afternoon, over lunch at a place that had the vegan seal of approval-lentil-paste sandwiches, eggplant a la paysanne, peanut-vinaigrette salad and tofu shakes-he asked her about that, about men, that is. "Rick, wasn't that his, name? Whatever happened to him?"

She was chewing, her cheeks full and round, sunlight painting the tiles around a little fountain, a murmur of voices from the other diners, the soft swish of cars on the boulevard. It took her a moment, her eyes tight with some secret knowledge. "Oh, him," she said finally. "That was sophomore year. He was — I don't know, he liked sports."

Tierwater, puzzled: "You don't like sports?"

"You know what I mean." A pause. Somewhere, very faintly, a Coltrane tune was playing, a tune that bad ravished him when he was her age. "I liked Donovan Kurtz senior year, remember I told you? He was in my environmental-issues class? He had a- Do you want to hear this?"

Iced tea, that's what Tierwater wanted. He flagged down the waitress and they both sat in silence while she refilled his glass. "Sure," he said, and let the corners of his mouth drop.

"He was a music major and he used to sing to me when we were making love."

"Let me guess," Tierwater said, plunging in to cover his embarrassment, his daughter making love, " 'I've Been Working on the Railroad'?"

"Dad."

" 'When the Saints Go Marching In'?"

Was it his imagination, or did she color, just a bit? Coltrane ran distantly up and down the scales, magnificent. Changes, the ice tinkled in his glass. He said, "So what happened to him?"

Sierra set down her sandwich, looked away, shrugged. "He got married."

Yes, and then she was up in northern California, in Scotia, getting set to trespass on Coast Lumber's property and take possession of one of Coast Lumber's prime trees, and Tierwater was behind the wheel of the black BMW hurtling up 101, Andrea at his side sorting through the CDs ("How about this one, how about Barbecue You?"), Teo in back, all that watery sun-pasted scenery scrolling past the windows. The talk was of Washington lobbyists, sanctimonious Sierra Clubbers, the banners they'd be waving when Sierra rose up into the sky — and the speed limit. "Slow down, Ty-it's fifty-five through here," Andrea kept saying. "You don't want to get pulled over, do you? And have to explain to the cop why you're not in Los Angeles?"

"What are you talking about?" He was irritated, of course he was irritated: all he could think about was that trip back from the Siskiyou, more déjà vu, and Sierra left behind in the hands of the enemy. And now what were they doing? Rushing back into the fray, ready to sacrifice her all over again. Because of Teo. Because of Teo and his Action Camp. "You think some Gilroy yokel is going to know or care who I am or what the deal is?"

"Computers," came Teo's voice from the back.

"Bullshit," Tierwater said, but he slowed down.

Then there was the pretense of the motel, Tierwater and Andrea in one room, king-size bed, magic fingers, no sex, and Teo in another, no confessions yet, no avowals or disavowals, something bigger than the three of them in the making, let's focus, let's go team, hooray for our side. Early breakfast. Dim and overcast, fog like the wallpaper of a dream, a smell in the air that was like graves being turned. Tierwater was uneasy. He lit a cigarette, nasty habit, and Andrea told him to go outside.

It was just past nine when they reached the turnoff outside of Scotia and the dusty, compacted lot beyond it that was really nothing more than the result of a pass or two with the Cat during some bygone logging operation. Trees stood tall along the road — the fence, as the timber company called it, to keep motorists from apprehending that the facade was all there was — and there were cars everywhere, sensible cars, Corollas, Accords, Saturns, the faded mustard Volvos and battered VW buses of the Movement. It was a Sunday. There was smoke in the air, a taste of the marijuana-scented past, the chink-chink of tambourines and the skreel of nose flutes. Tierwater pulled a baseball cap down over his balding head and stepped out of the car.