She was kind of looking out the window. She probably was thinking about what she was going to cook for supper.
"You think it wouldn't? You think Ellington would build a nice house for everybody if they could still put half of us in those falling-down shacks down by the river like I grew up in?"
"Well, you've been very kind to hear me out," she said. "I'll do what you want, tomorrow. Right now I'd better be on my way."
I went out on the porch and watched her go down the sidewalk--click click, on her little spike heels. Her ankles wobbled.
"Vonda," I yelled out after her, "don't wear high heels on the line tomorrow. For safety's sake."
She never turned around.
Next day the guys were making bets on Vonda showing up or not. The odds were not real good in her favor. I had to laugh, but myself I really thought she would. It was a huge picket line for the morning shift change. The Women's Auxiliary thought it would boost up the morale, which needed a kick in the butt or somebody would be busting down the plant gate. Corvallis told me that some guys had a meeting after the real meeting and planned it out. But I knew that if I kept showing up at the union meetings and standing on the table and jumping and hollering, they wouldn't do it. Sometimes guys will listen to a woman.
The sun was just coming up over the canyon and already it was a hot day. Cicada bugs buzzing in the paloverdes like damn rattlesnakes. Me and Janie Marley were talking about our kids; she has a boy one size down from Tony and we trade clothes around. All of a sudden Janie grabs my elbow and says, "Look who's here." It was Vonda getting out of the Lincoln. Not in high heels either. She had on a tennis outfit and plastic sunglasses and a baseball bat slung over her shoulder. She stopped a little ways from the line and was looking around, waiting for the Virgin Mary to come down, I guess, and save her. Nobody was collecting any bets.
"Come on, Vonda," I said. I took her by the arm and stood her between me and Janie. "I'm glad you made it." But she wasn't talking, just looking around a lot.
After a while I said, "We're not supposed to have bats up here. I know a guy that got his termination papers for carrying a crescent wrench in his back pocket. He had forgot it was even in there." I looked at Vonda to see if she was paying attention. "It was Rusty Cochran," I said, "you know him. He's up at your dad's every other day for a prescription. They had that baby with the hole in his heart."
But Vonda held on to the bat like it was the last man in the world and she got him. "I'm only doing this for Tommy," she says.
"Well, so what," I said. "I'm doing it for my kids. So they can eat."
She kept squinting her eyes down the highway.
A bunch of people started yelling. "Here come the ladies!" Some of the women from the Auxiliary were even saying it. And here come trouble. They were in Doreen's car, waving signs out the windows: "We Support Our Working Men" and other shit not worth repeating. Doreen was driving. She jerked right dead to a stop, right in front of us. She looked at Vonda and you would think she had broke both her hinges the way her mouth was hanging open, and Vonda looked back at Doreen, and the rest of us couldn't wait to see what was next.
Doreen took a U-turn and almost ran over Cecil Smoot, and they beat it back to town like bats out of hell. Ten minutes later here come her car back up the hill again. Only this time her husband Milton was driving, and three other men from Saint's Grace was all in there besides Doreen. Two of them are cops.
"I don't know what they're up to but we don't need you getting in trouble," I told Vonda. I took the bat away from her and put it over my shoulder. She looked real white, and I patted her arm and said, "Don't worry." I can't believe I did that, now. Looking back.
They pulled up in front of us again but they didn't get out, just all five of them stared and then they drove off, like whatever they come for they got.
That was yesterday. Last night I was washing the dishes and somebody come to the house. The kids were watching TV. I heard Tony slide the dead bolt over and then he yelled, "Mom, it's the Boot."
Before I can even put down a plate and get into the living room Larry Trevizo has pushed right by him into the house. I come out wiping my hands and see him there holding up his badge.
"Chief of Police, ma'am," he says, just like that, like I don't know who the hell he is. Like we didn't go through every grade of school together and go see Suddenly Last Summer one time in high school.
He says, "Mrs. Morales, I'm serving you with injunction papers."
"Oh, is that a fact," I say. "And may I ask what for?"
Tony already turned off the TV and is standing by me with his arms crossed, the meanest-looking damn eleven-year-old you ever hope to see in your life. All I can think of is the guys in the meeting, how they get so they just want to bust something in.
"Yes you may ask what for," Larry says, and starts to read, not looking any of us in the eye: "For being a danger to the public. Inciting a riot. Strike-related misconduct." And then real low he says something about Vonda Fangham and a baseball bat.
"What was that last thing?"
He clears his throat. "And for kidnapping Vonda Fangham and threatening her with a baseball bat. We got the affidavits."
"Pa'fuera!" I tell Larry Trevizo. I ordered him out of my house right then, told him if he wanted to see somebody get hurt with a baseball bat he could hang around my living room and find out. I trusted myself but not Tony. Larry got out of there.
The injunction papers said I was not to be in any public gathering of more than five people or I would be arrested. And what do you know, a squad of Boots was already lined up by the picket shack at the crack of dawn this morning with their hands on their sticks, just waiting. They knew I would be up there, I see that. They knew I would do just exactly all the right things. Like the guys say, Vicki might break but she don't bend.
They cuffed me and took me up to the jailhouse, which is in back of the Ellington main office, and took off my belt and my earrings so I wouldn't kill myself or escape. "With an earring?" I said. I was laughing. I could see this old rotten building through the office window; it used to be something or other but now there's chickens living in it. You could dig out of there with an earring, for sure. I said, "What's that over there, the Mexican jail? You better put me in there!"
I thought they would just book me and let me go like they did some other ones, before this. But no, I have to stay put. Five hundred thousand bond. I don't think this whole town could come up with that, not if they signed over every pink, purple, and blue house in Bolton.
It didn't hit me till right then about the guys wanting to tear into the plant. What they might do.
"Look, I got to get out by tonight," I told the cops. I don't know their names, it was some State Police I have never seen, seem like they just come up out of nowhere. I was getting edgy. "I have a union meeting and it's real important. Believe me, you don't want me to miss it."
They smiled. And then I got that terrible feeling you get when you see somebody has been looking you in the eye and smiling and setting a trap, and there you are in it like a damn rat.
What is going to happen I don't know. I'm keeping my ears open. I found out my kids are driving Manny to distraction--Tony told his social-studies class he would rather have a jailbird than a scab mom, and they sent him home with a note that he was causing a dangerous disturbance in class.
I also learned that Tommy Jones was not in any accident. He got called off his shift one day and was took to Morse in a helicopter with no explanation. They put him up at Howard Johnson's over there for five days, his meals and everything, just told him not to call nobody, and today he's back at work. They say he is all in one piece.
Well, I am too.
About the Author
BARBARA KINGSOLVER'S ten published books include novels, collections of short stories, poetry, essays, and an oral history. Her work has been translated into more than a dozen languages and has earned literary awards and a devoted readership at home and abroad. In 2000, sh
e was awarded the National Humanities Medal, our country's highest honor for service through the arts.
Ms. Kingsolver grew up in Kentucky and earned a graduate degree in biology before becoming a fulltime writer. With her husband, Steven Hopp, she cowrites articles on natural history, plays jazz, gardens, and raises two daughters. Their family divides its time between Tucson, Arizona, and a farm in southern Appalachia.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Praise
"Kingsolver's humanity sounds the clearest note...telling us about characters in the middle of their days, who live as we really do, from one small incident of awareness to the next."
--Los Angeles Times
"Kingsolver understands in an uncanny way the significance of the ordinary, the fleeting moment that may become lost or become catharsis. She writes with refreshing clarity, humor, and honesty."
--Detroit Free Press
"Kingsolver's voice has remarkable range.... Her stories are sharply defined and deftly constructed."
--Kirkus Reviews
"Delightful."
--New York Woman
"Every [story] supports Kingsolver's newly won reputation.... Her perceptions are touching, her phrases felicitous, her characters memorable."
--Arizona Daily Star
"Kingsolver's voice is sure and her narrative skill accomplished. Highly recommended."
--Library Journal
"These twelve beautifully imagined stories are funny, flip, sagacious...[and] carry all the pain and surprise of real life."
--7 Days
Books By
Barbara Kingsolver
Fiction
Prodigal Summer
The Poisonwood Bible
Pigs in Heaven
Animal Dreams
Homeland and Other Stories
The Bean Trees
Essays
Small Wonder
High Tide in Tucson
Poetry
Another America
Nonfiction
Holding the Line:
Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983
Copyright
HOMELAND AND OTHER STORIES. Copyright (c) 1989 by Barbara Kingsolver. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition (c) APRIL 2007 ISBN: 9780061865930
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Barbara Kingsolver, Homeland and Other Stories
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