Smith Henderson - Fourth of July Creek

Let’s go , Pomeroy said.

Did Pomeroy keep her under his arm all the way down Minor as they moved through the night in this bouncing, laughing pack, sometimes harassing passers-by for spare change and getting none because they didn’t conceal their happiness, even though they were to a person underfed and a little sick with inflamed lungs or swollen glands or limped a little on thin shoes and worn socks, and the girls flirted like they were the age they were and the boys were the grossest things they knew about, and the most pretty boy, Pomeroy, squeezing her close, so close, even Kenny who now looked a little jealous of Pomeroy with her under his arm the whole way did he keep her there?

Yes. And Rose wondered did Yolanda care and wondered when she herself wouldn’t care, wouldn’t feel a hot spot in her chest and her arms go a little numb when Yolanda would kiss him again, which she surely would.

And they passed a girl talking on a pay phone. The coiled metal cord in a loop under her bare arm, and the way she was or had been crying, her foot in its checkered sneaker on the glass, and her fist on the glass.

Was the girl talking to her daddy?

Rose thought maybe she was.

Was there a dull thudding of music and purple lights from the bell tower, from this white clapboard church on the corner of Boren and Stewart throbbing within?

Like some kind of demented midnight mass. The lot filled with cars and milling kids.

What is this? she asked.

The Monastery , Yo said.

Bearded ladies came through the lot in pink tutus and wands and sparkling blue and green eye shadow, footing steadily on shaven monkey legs in heels across the littered lot. Nigh a parade of apish slatterns and ladyboys and mustached musclemen in denim and sport socks. A lesbian sauntered by in a zoot suit. And milling all about them like fruit flies were these street kids in ski jackets and sweaters, dressed for the cold. The steady pulse of disco and Pomeroy peeled his arm off Rose and strode to the front step.

Where’s he going? Rose asked. She felt unsafe without Pomeroy, unchaperoned.

Yo pulled her aside and gave her another cigarette. They shared it awhile before they spoke, Rose’s eyes flashing from time to time at the door. Yo sat on the hood of an old Cadillac and beckoned Rose up there and they perched together, passing the smoke and watching the new arrivals dash around. They looked as young as twelve, some of them. They wore hooded sweatshirts and some were done up in cheap costumes, cardboard wings and tiaras and halos of tinfoil and other such getups as you might find at a school play. They shrieked and clutched one another in hysterics, in greeting. Everything was amplified. The music, the lights, these outlandish children.

See? Yo said. It’s all right. Everybody around here is cool. Everybody knows everybody.

Rose folded her legs under her and sat full on the hood of the car. She was so thin now that she didn’t dent the hood.

You don’t have to go with me and Pom. You find some other people you want to hang with, that’s cool.

Oh, I like you guys fine , she said meaningfully. A skosh of worry in it. Really, I like you and Pomeroy a lot. I’m not jealous of you two or nothing.

Yo exhaled smoke and smiled.

We like you.

You do?

Yeah. I knew I would from the way Pom was telling me about you. It could be weird or it could be cool, and with Pom it’s always cool.

Rose didn’t know what to say or to ask.

You want a beer?

Yes.

Yo ran off. Rose rubbed her legs. Yo returned with a number of girls and they gave Rose beer from a sack, Yo making introductions, the girls checking Rose out. The night turned cold as they spoke about people Rose didn’t know and places she hadn’t been.

And when Pomeroy came back out, a few hours later, pink in the eyes, and aweave in his foot placement, and grinning, colliding gently into the coterie of girls around the car, what did he do?

He threw up, nearly on Kenny. A short bolt of laughter escaped Rose that she clipped off when Kenny looked to see who it was.

Yolanda took him off through the lot and Rose hurried after. They dropped next to a chain-link fence that jangled where Pomeroy fell into it, laughing himself. It was moist in the weeds from the nightdew.

I’m cold , Rose said.

Too much beers , Pomeroy muttered. I’m about like to trip out.

He had to arc up his ass to get his hand into his jeans pocket — Rose resisted the urge to touch his naked stomach — and pull out a plastic Baggie. The light on it fairly glowed white and illicit in the dark.

Was it coke?

No.

Was it MDA?

Maybe.

What was it?

What it was was Yolanda taking a sniff off a matchbook and shaking her head and handing the Baggie to Rose who looked at it and then over among the cars where there was a scuffle happening and then toward the street and then back into the Baggie and taking it up like she’s seen Yolanda do.

What it was was a sweet knife of tingling and then a slow drip of jitters, and handing it back to Pomeroy who was vaguely nearby asking for it and the sound of him taking a short blast and saying oh man and hot rushes up and down her arms that she imagined was Braille, some text in her body, but was only goose bumps.

What it was was Yolanda laughing and standing and Rose was up and standing and walking as liquid blurs slithered past.

What it was was they were in the Monastery now. Pomeroy had her by the wrist as they birthed themselves again and again through the wet and heated throng. A strobe froze each posture in giddy eternities, a mandarin and a geisha with elongated faces. Sparkling beards. Howling caryatids of pale shirtless boys. Dark gauntlets. What it was was an arm thrown round her shoulder and pulling her up under her armpit to bounce, and Rose lost Pomeroy’s grip and gave over to the mass of arms and sweat and stomp. Completely naked men on the speakers, the small gyre of their cocks as they danced. She was hefted up, passed from fag to fag and deposited in a bank of airline seats.

She could not stop laughing.

A furry animal tossed up and down in the lap of the man next to her.

She tapped his arm. He didn’t look over.

You have something there! she yelled.

The man opened his eyes and smiled at her and said, Yes, yes I do.

She looked again and the man clutched the animal and it was a human head giving him head. There was a bottle under her. She unscrewed the cap and drank hot fire and nearly threw up. She stood and heaved herself back into the mass. Disappeared into it.

Pinkerton had met Pearl at a loggers’ swap meet in the Idaho woods. He was undercover, had been coming and going in the area for the past three months by the name of Joe Stacks. He’d done odd jobs — every man was a handyman up here — and lived in a cabin the ATF had bought just the other side of the Montana border in Boundary County, Idaho. He’d gone to the meetup with a swarthy dimwit by the name of Ruffin, a big-talking hyperactive conspiracy freak.

This is where he meets Pearl, a country roundup where the folks in the region trade stories and sell chain saws, rhubarb, and crafts made of pie tin and rope. There was nothing inherently political about the gathering, just rumors that so-and-so was Posse Comitatus, Truppe Schweigen. Or not. And among the people Ruffin introduced Stacks to was one Jeremiah Pearl. The real deal, Ruffin says. Tribulation-ready, Race War — ready. Set up to handle the National Guard, the Shit-Covered Fan, the feds, the unraveling of the social compact.