The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of Stories (53 page)

“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” Patsy said, trying to hide herself in his arms. “And besides …”

He hid his face in her hair. “Besides nothing.”

“No, really. Besides. Everybody has guns now, everybody has different feelings, but they all hate deserters. We have a new policy.”

“They’d never find us.”

She looked into Andy’s face. “Don’t you want to hear about the new policy?”

“
OK
, what?”

“About deserters.” She spelled it out, more than a little surprised at how far she had come. “It’s hunt down and shave and kill.”

“They wouldn’t really do that.”

“We had the first one last night, this poor old lady about forty. She got homesick for her family and tried to run away.”

Andy was still amused. “They shaved all her hair off?”

“That wasn’t all,” Patsy said. “When they got finished they really did it. Firing squad, the works.”

Although June would not have been sensitive to it, there were diverging feelings in the camp about who did what, and what there was to do. All she knew was she was sick and tired of working in the day care compound and when she went to Sheena and complained, Sheena, with exquisite sensitivity, put her in charge of the detail that guarded the shopping center. It was a temporary assignment but it gave June a chance to put on a cartridge belt and all the other paraphernalia of victory, so she cut an impressive figure for Vic, when he came along.

“It’s me, honey, don’t you know me?”

“Go away,” she said with some satisfaction. “No civilians allowed.”

“Oh for God’s sake.”

To their mutual astonishment, she raised her rifle. “Bug off, fella.”

“You don’t really think you can get away with this.”

“Bug off or I’ll shoot.”

“We’re just letting you do this, to get it out of your system.” Vic moved as if to relieve her of the rifle. “If it makes you feel a little better …”

“This is your last warning.”

“Listen,” Vic said, a study in male outrage, “one step too far and,
tschoom
, federal troops.”

She fired a warning shot so he left.

Glenda was a little sensitive about the fact that various husbands had found ways to smuggle in messages, some had even come looking for their wives, but not Richard. One poor bastard had been shot when he came in too close to the fire; they heard an outcry and a thrashing in the bushes but when they looked for him the next morning there was no body, so he must have dragged himself away. There had been notes in food consignments and one husband had hired a skywriter, but so far she had neither word nor sign from Richard, and she wasn’t altogether convinced she cared. He seemed to have drifted off into time past along with her job, her students, and her book. Once her greatest hope had been to read her first chapter at the national psychological conference; now she wondered whether there would even be any more conferences. If she and the others were successful, that would break down, along with a number of other things. Still, in the end she would have had her definitive work on the women’s revolution, but so far the day-to-day talk had been so engrossing that she hadn’t had a minute to begin. Right now, there was too much to do.

They made their first nationwide telecast from a specifically erected podium in front of the captured shopping center. For various complicated reasons the leaders made Sally speak first, and, as they had anticipated, she espoused the moderate view: this was a matter of service, women were going to have to give up a few things to help better the lot of their sisters. Once the job was done everything would be improved, but not really different.

Sheena came next, throwing back her bright hair and issuing the call to arms. The mail she drew would include several spirited letters from male volunteers who were already in love with her and would follow her anywhere; because the women had pledged never to take allies, these letters would be destroyed before they ever reached her.

Dr. Ora Fessenden was all threats, fire and brimstone. Rap took up where she left off.

“We’re going to fight until there’s not a man left standing …”

Annie Chandler yelled, “Right on.”

Margy was trying to speak. “ … just a few concessions.”

Rap’s eyes glittered. “Only sisters, and you guys …”

Ellen Ferguson said, “Up, women, out of slavery.”

Rap’s voice rose. “ … you guys are going to burn.”

Sally was saying, “ … reason with you.”

Rap hissed, “Bury you.”

It was hard to say which parts of these messages reached the viewing public, as the women all interrupted and overrode each other and the cameramen concentrated on Sheena, who was to become the sign and symbol of the revolution. None of the women on the platform seemed to be listening to any of the others, which may have been just as well; the only reason they had been able to come this far together was because nobody ever did.

The letters began to come.

“Dear Sheena, I would like to join, but I already have nine children and now I am pregnant again …”

“Dear Sheena, I am a wife and mother but I will throw it all over in an instant if you will only glance my way …”

“Dear Sheena, our group has occupied the town hall in Gillespie, Indiana, but we are running out of ammo and the water supply is low. Several of the women have been stricken with plague, and we are running out of food …”

“First I made him lick my boots and then I killed him but now I have this terrible problem with the body, the kids don’t want me to get rid of him …”

“Who do you think you are, running this war when you don’t even know what you are doing, what you have to do is kill every last damn one of them and the ones you don’t kill you had better cut off their Things …”

“Sheena, baby, if you will only give up this half-assed revolution you and I can make beautiful music together. I have signed this letter Maud to escape the censors but if you look underneath the stamp you can see who I really am.”

The volunteers were arriving in dozens. The first thing was that there was not housing for all of them; there was not equipment, and so the woman in charge had to cut off enlistments at a certain point and send the others back to make war in their own hometowns.

The second thing was that, with the increase in numbers, there was an increasing bitterness about the chores. Nobody wanted to do them; in secret truth nobody ever had, but so far the volunteers had all borne it, up to a point, because they sincerely believed that in the new order there would be no chores.
Now they understood that the more people there were banded together, the more chores there would be. Laundry and garbage were piling up. At some point around the time of the occupation of the shopping center, the women had begun to understand that no matter what they accomplished, there would always be ugly things to do: the chores, and now, because there seemed to be so
much
work, there were terrible disagreements as to who was supposed to do what, and as a consequence they had all more or less stopped doing any of it.

Meals around the camp were catch as catch can.

The time was approaching when nobody in the camp would have clean underwear.

The latrines were unspeakable.

The children were getting out of hand; some of them were forming packs and making raids of their own, so that the quartermaster never had any clear idea of what she would find in the storehouse. Most of the women in the detail that had been put in charge of the day care compound were fed up.

By this time Sheena was a national figure; her picture was on the cover of both newsmagazines in the same week and there were nationally distributed lines of sweatshirts and tooth glasses bearing her picture and her name. She received love mail and hate mail in such quantity that Lory, who had joined the women to realize her potential as an individual, had to give up her other duties to concentrate on Sheena’s mail. She would have to admit that it was better than
KP
, and besides, if Sheena went on to better things, maybe she would get to go along.

The air of dissatisfaction grew. Nobody agreed any more, not even all those who had agreed to agree for the sake of the cause. Fights broke out like flash fires; some women were given to sulks and inexplicable silences, others to blows and helpless tears quickly forgotten. On advice from Sally, Sheena called a council to try and bring everybody together, but it got off on the wrong foot.

Dr. Ora Fessenden said, “Are we going to sit around on our butts, or what?”

Sheena said, “National opinion is running in our favor. We have to consolidate our gains.”

Rap said, “Gains hell. What kind of war is this? Where are the scalps?”

Sheena drew herself up. “We are not Amazons.”

Rap said, “That’s a crock of shit,” and she and Dr. Ora Fessenden stamped out.

“Rape,” Rap screamed, running from the far left to the far right and then making a complete circuit of the clearing. “Rape,” she shouted, taking careful note of who came running and who didn’t. “Raaaaaaaaape.”

Dr. Ora Fessenden rushed to her side, the figure of outraged womanhood. They both watched until a suitable number of women had assembled and then she said, in stentorian tones, “We cannot let this go unavenged.”

“My God,” Sheena said, looking at the blackened object in Rap’s hand. “What are you doing with that thing?”

Blood-smeared and grinning, Rap said, “When you’re trying to make a point, you have to go ahead and make your point.” She thrust her trophy into Sheena’s face.

Sheena averted her eyes quickly; she thought it was an ear. “That’s supposed to be a
rhetorical
point.”

“Listen, baby, this world doesn’t give marks for good conduct.”

Sheena stiffened. “You keep your girls in line or you’re finished.”

Rap was smoldering; she pushed her face up to Sheena’s, saying, “You can’t do without us and you know it.”

“If we have to, we’ll learn.”

“Aieeee.” One of Rap’s cadre had taken the trophy from her and tied it on a string; now she ran through the camp swinging it around her head, and dozens of throats opened to echo her shout. “Aieeeeee.”

Patsy and Andy were together in the bushes near the camp; proximity to danger made their pleasure more intense. Andy said, “Leave with me.”

She said, “I can’t. I told you what they do to deserters.”

“They’ll never catch us.”

“You don’t know these women,” Patsy said. “Look, Andy, you’d better go.”

“Just a minute more.” Andy buried his face in her hair. “Just a little minute more.”

“Rape,” Rap shouted again, running through the clearing with her voice raised like a trumpet. “Raaaaaaaape.”

Although she knew it was a mistake, Sally had sneaked away to see Zack and the children. The camp seemed strangely deserted, and nobody was there to sign out the Jeep she took. She had an uncanny intimation of trouble at a great
distance, but she shook it off and drove to her house. She would have expected barricades and guards: state of war, but the streets were virtually empty and she reached her neighborhood without trouble.

Zack and the children embraced her and wanted to know when she was coming home.

“Soon, I think. They’re all frightened of us now.”

Zack said, “I’m not so sure.”

“There doesn’t seem to be any resistance.”

“Oh,” he said, “they’ve decided to let you have the town.”

“What did I tell you?”

“Sop,” he said. “You can have anything you want. Up to a point.”

Sally was thinking of Rap and Dr. Ora Fessenden. “What if we take more?”

“Wipeout,” Zack said. “You’ll see.”

“Oh Lord,” she said, vaulting into the Jeep. “Maybe it’ll be over sooner than I thought.”

She was already too late. She saw the flames shooting skyward as she came out of the drive.

“It’s Flowermont.”

Because she had to make sure, she wrenched the Jeep in that direction and rode to the garden apartments; smoke filled the streets for blocks around.

Looking at the devastation, Sally was reminded of Indian massacres in the movies of her childhood: the smoking ruins, the carnage, the moans of the single survivor who would bubble out his story in her arms. She could not be sure about the bodies: whether there were any, whether there were as many as she thought, but she was sure those were charred corpses in the rubble. Rap and Dr. Ora Fessenden had devised a flag and hoisted it from a tree: the symbol of the women’s movement, altered to suit their mood—the crudely executed fist reduced to clenched bones and surrounded by flames. The single survivor died before he could bubble out his story in her arms.

In the camp, Rap and Dr. Ora Fessenden had a victory celebration around the fire. They had taken unspeakable trophies in their raid and could not understand why many of the women refused to wear them.

Patsy and Andy, in the bushes, watched with growing alarm. Even from their safe distance, Andy was fairly sure he saw what he thought he saw and he whispered, “Look, we’ve got to get out of here.”