You could tell from the accomplished way he laid down the sound bites that he had done this sort of thing before. Joel “Hacker” Hackman, veteran of a hundred lockdowns and almost as many arrests, was one of Missoula’s many minor ecolegends. Balding, bearded, and built like a bear with a beer gut, he was a good fifteen to twenty years older than the rest of them. He was a UM forestry graduate of the early eighties and had never gone home to Omaha, Nebraska (Why would anyone? he liked to joke, before anyone else said it). Instead he had built himself a cabin in the Bitterroots and founded a small organization called Forest Action, whose primary, if not sole, purpose was to make life as hard as possible for the Forest Service and logging companies. Abbie and Mel had met him nearly two months ago during their first week at UM when they were checking out the local environmental groups. Charmed and inspired, they had done volunteer work for him ever since, which until today had mostly meant stuffing envelopes.
Hacker had once been married and had a fourteen-year-old son he doted on but didn’t see so much of nowadays since the boy had moved with his mother to Santa Barbara. Whether the woman had gotten more tired of having to bail Hacker out of jail every few months or of his legendary womanizing nobody knew for sure. He had hit on Abbie a couple of times already and the second time, late one night at a party after a little too much to drink, she had very nearly succumbed. She certainly found him more attractive than the boys she had met so far at UM, guys like Scott and Eric, who were fun to hang out with but just a little immature. In the knowing looks Hacker had ever since been giving her, Abbie could tell he considered her unfinished business.
If she was honest with herself, the prospect didn’t displease her and perhaps the only thing that had held her back was a confused and faintly guilt-ridden sense of loyalty to Ty. During the two months she had been in Missoula, they had seen each other only once, when he drove all the way from Wyoming to spend a weekend with her. And though it was good to see him, he had seemed, with his hat and boots and his gentle, old-fashioned manners, a little awkward and out of place among her hipper new crowd of college friends.
The TV reporter now interviewing Hacker was a pinch-faced woman of about thirty. She was wearing a voluminous black parka with a fur hood that made her look as if she was being swallowed by a bear. She was listening to Hacker’s monologue with a half-smile that somehow succeeded in being both patronizing and disapproving. But maybe she was just bored and cold, like Abbie.
“And what’s with the dancing fish?”
“This creek is one of the last good spawning grounds for bull trout,” Hacker said. “Clear-cutting these slopes, like they’re doing down there right now with that helicopter, means all the water runs off into the creek, carrying the mineral earth with it. The sediment builds up, the fish don’t spawn anymore. Kills the forest, kills the fish. The kind of reckless corporate greed Montana’s seen too much of.”
Just as the interview was winding up, there was the sound of a vehicle coming down the hill behind the gate, then a long blast of horns. Hacker turned to look and, for the first time, the reporter seemed interested. She whispered to the cameraman to keep shooting. The sheriff and his deputies and the Forest Service people were all hurrying up the hill toward them. Abbie braced herself for the pain and managed to swivel around just in time to see the dancing trout leap out of the path of a mud-spattered red pickup. It scrunched to a halt just a few feet from the gate.
“What’s going on?”
“Logging crew,” Hacker said quietly.
The truck doors opened and four men got out to have a better look at what was going on. They wore feed caps and expressions of amused distaste. All but one, who from his swagger seemed to be the one in charge, looked about the same age as the protesters. But that was the only thing they had in common. Alongside them, even Hacker looked boyish. He stepped forward with a comradely smile.
“Hi, fellas. Sorry about the inconvenience. We’re just peacefully protesting the illegal clear-cutting that’s going on here.”
The foreman, if that was what he was, didn’t answer, just gave him a look and walked past and came around the far end of the gate. He had a ponytail and an earring and a black circle of beard and mustache around a tight little mouth. With his thumbs tucked into the belt loops of his blue jeans, he sauntered past Mel and Scott, looking down on them as if at some lower form of life. He stopped in front of Abbie and stood there, chewing on something and staring down at her with an odd half-smile.
“Must be nice having nothing to do all day ’cept sit around on your ass,” he said.
“Sure beats brainlessly butchering green trees,” Abbie said.
She saw Hacker scowl and wondered why. The foreman’s eyes narrowed. He sucked in his cheeks, rotated his chin a fraction, then sent a glob of black tobacco juice splatting onto the road a few inches from her right boot. Abbie had a sudden urge to kick him in the balls but decided it might not be too smart a move.
“Who are you calling brainless, you little tree-hugger bitch?”
Hacker stepped forward. The TV camera was still rolling. You could see the reporter almost wetting herself with excitement.
“Hey, guys, easy now,” Hacker said.
Abbie’s heart was racing. She hoped she didn’t look half as scared as she felt. Thank God, just at that moment, two of the deputies and Iverson, the senior Forest Service agent, arrived. He was tall, with a gingery blond mustache and gold-rimmed glasses, and in his Stetson seemed a much more commanding figure than the tubby little sheriff still panting up the hill behind him. He had handled the protest all day with a firm but courteous good humor.
“Okay, everybody. Let’s keep things nice and calm here.”
“We’ve got no grouse with you fellas,” Hacker said to the foreman. “You’re just doing your job, we know that. It’s your employers who need to know better.”
The guy turned to face him.
“Now you’re saying it too. We’re just ignorant sons-of-bitches.”
“No, sir. I don’t mean that at all. We appreciate you have to earn a living—”
“We’ve been working our butts off up here since five this morning and now we want to go home, okay?”
“We’re sorry about that, but—”
“Just open the goddamn gate.”
“Okay, gentlemen, that’s enough,” Iverson said, stepping between them with his palms raised, facing the logger now. “Sir, if you and your colleagues wouldn’t mind going back over there to your vehicle, we’ll see if we can sort something out here.”
After twenty minutes of negotiation, the moment Abbie had been longing for arrived. Hacker was persuaded that the protest had made its point. Someone produced the keys to the bicycle locks and one by one Hacker freed them, Mel and Scott first, then Abbie. As he knelt down beside her, she smiled and thought he might say well done or ask how she felt, but he didn’t say a word or even look her in the eye.
When she stood up her joints seemed to have frozen and she almost fell over. But it sure felt good to be free. They all stood aside and as the loggers’ pickup drove past, she saw the foreman staring at her through the glass. The look in his eyes made her hope they would never meet again.
It was a three-hour trip back to Missoula and they pulled into the first eating place they found and refueled on pizza and fries and chocolate fudge pie, all washed down with a gallon of hot coffee. Spirits were running high and they laughed and joked as they rowdily relived the day’s events. Todd and P.J. kept teasing Abbie about what she had said to the logger, mimicking what she had only lately been made aware was her slightly haughty-sounding East Coast accent.
“Be off with you, you brainless tree butcher person!” Todd hooted.
It was all well intended and Abbie gave as good as she got. Eric said he was going to write a new song called “Butchers & Huggers,” and she retorted that if anyone needed a new song, he did. Then they got to talking about going up to Seattle the following month, after Thanksgiving, to protest t
he World Trade Organization meeting. Todd, who was already making banners, said it was going to be a blast and that the whole world was going to be there. Sitting snug among these new friends, bonded by youth and adventure and giddy idealism, the chill in her bones melting in a warm, replenishing glow, Abbie felt joyful and proud and absurdly heroic.
It was dark when they came out. Weaving a route among the red neon puddles of the parking lot to their cars, she found herself alone for a few moments alongside Hacker.
“You did good today,” he said.
“Thanks.”
“Has your butt thawed out yet?”
“Almost.”
“But, you know, saying what you did to that guy was a mistake. You turned him into your enemy.”
“He didn’t exactly look like he wanted to be friends.”
“Maybe not. But it’s better to make him smile than spit. The rule is: Defuse, don’t escalate. One snide remark and the whole atmosphere flipped.”
“All I said was—”
“We all heard what you said. Thing is, you made him look like a fool and that made him mad. It’s people like him we need to win over.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’m only telling you so next time you’ll know.”
It was Abbie’s turn to feel foolish. Packed with half a dozen others in the back of Hacker’s old VW camper van, she brooded awhile. Always the proud perfectionist, she never found criticism easy to take, however well meant. But she wasn’t going to let it spoil her day or let Hacker know he’d gotten to her and by the time they reached Missoula she was again laughing with the others.
The plan was for everyone to go back to Todd and Eric’s place, a ramshackle house on Fourth Street that backed onto the river. But when they stopped at the liquor store to pick up a keg, Abbie said she needed to do some work and was going to head back to the dorm. Hacker offered to drop her off but she said she wanted to walk.
“No hard feelings,” he said quietly.
“Of course not.”
She said good night to everyone and thanked Hacker politely for the ride and for letting her come along. But she was damned if she was ever going to stuff another envelope for him. And as for going to bed with him, well, maybe when hell froze over.
THIRTEEN
Sarah had never much cared for Thanksgiving. There was too much work and too much tension, both of which seemed to double when, every alternate year, it was their turn to have Benjamin’s mother to stay. In the days when his father had been alive, her parents-in-law had always stayed home and—again, every second year—Sarah and Benjamin had been expected to fly to Kansas, where tensions of a different order applied (most of them between Benjamin and his father) and Sarah had felt more like a spectator than a participant and had been able to relax a little. Had she been told that one day she would feel nostalgia for those Abilene Thanksgivings she would never have believed it.
The turkey had gone into the oven at eight-thirty and as it cooked, so had Sarah’s temper. Every twenty minutes or so, Margaret came wandering into the kitchen to ask again if there was anything she could do and no matter how often Sarah said thanks, but no, really, everything was under control and going just fine, she would hover, making little comments about how the meal was being prepared. How interesting it was that Sarah basted the turkey so rarely or how unusual it was not to flour the roasted potatoes.
More to get rid of her than anything else, Sarah had allowed her to help set the dining room table, but even then Margaret had to go fetch the iron to get rid of the creases in the white linen tablecloth. The crowning insult was her readjustment of the center decoration of mahonia and lilies that had taken Sarah an hour to make the previous night. The poor woman was probably unaware that any of her actions could be construed as criticism, but just when Sarah was telling herself not to be so paranoid, that her mother-in-law meant well, she would catch her running a covert finger along a shelf to check for dust.
Then there were the stories, endlessly repetitive, about friends or neighbors back in Abilene, almost invariably people Sarah had never met or about something that had happened on a daytime TV show she had never seen or about some heroic or amusing escapade from Benjamin’s boyhood that everyone had heard twenty times before.
Margaret Cooper was a small, rounded woman, with a tight gray perm and a constant, utterly unconvincing smile in which her mouth did all the work while her eyes remained steely. In her late seventies, she was still physically robust and meticulous in her appearance. But in the twelve months since Sarah had last seen her, the repetition had become almost ruthless. Even if you gently let her know that she had already told you something, she would insist on telling you again.
Benjamin, meanwhile, as he so often did when his mother came to stay, had disappeared. Most of the morning he had been stuck in his studio talking on the phone, probably to Martin or to Eve Kinsella in Santa Fe about those dreadful paintings she was doing for their new office block. And when he came in he went straight to the living room and slouched on the couch next to Abbie, listening to tales of derring-do in the forests of Montana. Sarah would have liked to hear them too if she had had only a moment to sit down. Abbie, bless her heart, had offered to help but Sarah had told her the most useful thing she could possibly do was entertain her grandmother and keep her out of the kitchen.
What had gotten into Benjamin lately, Sarah couldn’t figure out. He used to help out but these days barely lifted a finger. Except, of course, at the gym, which had become his new obsession. Since this time last year, he must have lost about ten or twelve pounds and he claimed it made him feel a lot better, though it certainly didn’t seem to have made him any happier. His face seemed to grow a little longer every day. Perhaps it was being stretched by all those newly toned muscles.
She knew how much he missed Abbie. They all did. But his way of coping with it seemed to be to retreat into himself. She hardly saw him. He got up at six every morning to go to the gym and drove from there to work. And when he came home, more often than not, he said he had work to do and carried his supper out to the studio.
And Josh was always either out with friends or up in his room talking to Katie Bradstock or playing that awful, thumping music and pretending to work. How he could even hear himself think was a mystery. So mostly Sarah ate alone now, maybe watched a little TV, and then, at about nine-thirty, went to bed and read. By the time Benjamin came to bed, she was usually asleep. They hadn’t made love in nearly two months. He just didn’t seem bothered anymore. On the couple of occasions that she had tried to initiate it, he said he felt too tired.
Sarah had done her best to turn things around. Books on the subject all said that combating empty-nest syndrome—or, in their case, half-empty-nest—required effort. So last weekend, when Josh was sleeping over at a friend’s place, as a surprise, she had booked a table at a new seafood restaurant that had opened in Oyster Bay.
The place was crowded, the atmosphere lively, and the food terrific and Sarah tried, God how she tried, to get some kind of conversation going. But Benjamin just didn’t seem to want to know. He answered her questions, sure. But he didn’t ask any of his own and after about half an hour there they were, sitting in silence, looking around at the other people who were, of course, all talking and having fun. Sarah remembered how they used to joke about married couples in restaurants who sat there looking sad and bored, and how Benjamin would invent a fantasy dialogue of what might be running through their heads. And now they were that couple. It almost broke her heart.
To see him now so lively and regenerated by Abbie’s presence, bantering with her as they all sat around the creaseless table, somehow only made it worse. But Sarah was trying not to think about it. She kept telling herself to smile and laugh along with the others, to be positive. It was the day when every family had an overriding duty to be happy and not to brood on the cracks that might be running up the walls. The turkey, however inadequately basted, had been adjudged by all a triump
h. And though Margaret had taken just one small mouthful of her pumpkin pie before gently shunting her plate away, everyone else seemed to be enjoying it. Benjamin was asking Abbie about going to the WTO meeting in Seattle the following week and what kind of protest she and her friends were planning.
“What does WTO stand for?” Margaret asked.
“It’s the Whatever happened to Ty Organization,” Josh chipped in.
Abbie had earlier made the mistake of telling Sarah in his presence that she had seen Ty only once since the summer and that she felt a little guilty about it. She groaned and gave him a quick, withering look.
“Josh, grow up. It’s the World Trade Organization, Grandma. A club of wealthy countries that do their best to cheat the developing world and keep it poor.”
“That reminds me,” Margaret began. You could hear the collective sound of hearts sinking. “Benjamin, do you remember when you went on that Vietnam protest rally in Lawrence when you were at college . . . ?”
Oh God, Sarah said to herself, here it comes. The Long Hair story. Abbie and Josh exchanged a knowing smirk. Benjamin smiled wearily.
“. . . and Harry Baxter saw you on the local TV news with your long hair and came into the store and told your father you looked like a girl?”
“Yes, Mom, I do.”
“You know, Abbie, your father had hair right down to his shoulders.”
“I know, Grandma. I’ve seen the photos.”
“They were always protesting something or other. The war or Negro rights or whatever was in fashion at the time.”
“It was called civil rights, Mom. And I don’t think it went out of fashion.”
“Whatever. Anyway, I thought he looked handsome and not a bit like a girl. But you know, Abbie, after that, he grew a beard.”
“I know, Grandma. You told us.”