Brown-Eyed Girl (32 page)

Almost nobody knew about Elroy's bunker. Today it was much more crowded than he was used to. His wife came in only to clean, and his daughter and her kids hadn't even known it existed until today. Arthur had of course been in there before, but Dirtbag had never had the privilege, and he found it cozy. He and the kids were watching
Rugrats
on satellite TV and eating canned fruit cocktail. Arthur had suggested that Elroy shouldn't subscribe to cable, because the government might have ways of using it to monitor activities on the ranch. Just now, Elroy was wishing he didn't have the satellite either, because the kids' shows were driving him batty. They'd been down there overnight, and the television had been blasting every hour the kids were awake. He grabbed the remote, punched mute, and was about to hit the off button and hurl it against the wall when he accidently hit the channel changer button and tuned the set to CNN. A booger in the corner of the screen assured the viewer that what they were seeing was live, as if you couldn't tell by looking at the picture. A blow-dry guy in a camo jacket stood holding his ear and yakking into a hand-held microphone, trying to hear and make himself heard over machine noise and a deafening wind. In the background, Elroy was stunned to see the gates of his own ranch. He turned the sound back on.

“We've just arrived at Freedom Ranch, where federal and local law enforcement agents are on their way to a standoff with a social conservative billionaire and his personal militia. As you can see through the gate”—the correspondent gestured toward the gate—“the militia members, who call themselves the Unknown Soldiers, have set up defensive positions here at the remote compound of entrepreneur Elroy Foote, a man as well known for his devotion to conservative causes as for his immense wealth.”

He paused for a moment, cupping his earpiece, as the voice of a studio newscaster cut in with a question. “What kinds of weapons do they have, Drake?”

“From what we can see from here, Roberta, there appear to be machine guns mounted on Jeeps or humvees. All the militia members are carrying automatic rifles and pistols, and several appear also to have hand grenades. Of course, that doesn't tell us what we
can't
see from here.” Drake paused again, this time for effect. “Only time will tell.”

Elroy roared and lunged for his walkie-talkie, hollering at the Number Five man in the Unknown Soldiers, who was supposed to be securing the perimeter. “What's going on out there, boy?! How come you haven't apprised me of the situation? How many government troops are out there?”

“This is Number Five,” came the reply. “Sorry, sir, but the press has just arrived. They came in helicopters and landed about five minutes ago. Kicked up a hell of a lot of dust—we've had our hands full keeping our weapons in firing trim and our butts from blowing away.”

“I can see the reporters are there, by heaven!” Elroy screamed. “I'm watching CNN! I asked you how many
troops
are there. How many police, federal agents—you know!”

For a moment, Number Five was silent. Probably trying to estimate the forces arrayed against them. “Um, let's see. Still a lot of dust out there, sir, visibility is poor.”

“Just give me a ballpark guess!”

“Okay. Um . . . looks like one squad car, so far, from the Teton County Sheriff's Office. And . . . oh yeah, here comes a truck, maybe a Forest Service pickup. Oh boy!” He was getting excited. “Here come a couple of state police cruisers. Yeah, they're coming in. Looks like at this point, we're talking about eight or ten guys. Oops,” he said as two shotgun-wielding officers emerged from one of the cars. “One of 'em's a girl.”

“Doesn't exactly sound like a siege,” Elroy said, sounding oddly disappointed.

The studio correspondent on CNN appeared to be making the same observation to Drake, the guy in the camo jacket. “Shh,” said Elroy, watching the television to find out what was happening.

“That's right, Roberta,” Drake said. “Law enforcement teams are only now beginning to mass here at the gate. As you've correctly observed, CNN arrived
before
the police. We'll be here covering this very volatile situation
live
as it develops. Ah—I'm now seeing what looks like a troop transport coming down the road. People are getting out and, yes! It's the FBI SWAT team!” said Drake, sounding as if he was broadcasting the Rose Bowl Parade. “And now here come the ATF sharpshooters!”

“The press got here before the police?” Arthur asked incredulously. “What kind of discipline do they have in those government agencies anyway? Somebody's going to pay for that leak!”

Dirtbag, who'd been extremely disappointed when Elroy had turned off
Rugrats
, asked the obvious question. “So what do we do now?”

The various law enforcement agencies were quickly taking up positions, and somebody was going up to Drake the camo-man and rudely suggesting that he get the hell out of the way. But then the sound of helicopters drowned out all talk. Half a dozen copter pilots jockeyed and jostled for landing spots, and there was very nearly a massive collision. By the time all six had landed, disgorging media people from the major networks and a team of advisers to the governor of Wyoming, the camera crews were all screaming at each other, the governor's men were reaming out the cops, and the law enforcement teams were at each others' throats about who would coordinate the operation.

Arthur turned quietly to Elroy, the gleam of cold metal in his translucent eyes. “We need to take advantage of this situation, Number One,” he said. “Their disarray is our opportunity. I respectfully suggest that you order a unit to engage in diversionary tactics, which will give you and Mrs. Foote and the family time to get to your escape vehicle. Howard and I will escort you, and then return to defend the property.”

Elroy nodded. He could see their chance slipping away. The FBI SWAT team was fanning out to quell the riot and get everyone organized. The ATF agents were taking up positions, and only a few reporters were still shoving and shouting. “Calling Unit Patrick Henry, Patrick Henry, do you read me? Over,” he screamed into the walkie-talkie.

A voice came back. “We read you, George Washington. Over.”

“Create a diversion, immediately. Over.”

“Diversion? What kind of diversion? Over.”

Elroy gave it some thought. “Blow something up. Over.”

Arthur and Mrs. Foote exchanged apprehensive looks.

“George Washington, this is Patrick Henry. What should we blow up? Over.”

“I don't give a damn what you blow up!” Elroy said, so panicked that he forgot to say “over.” “Just throw a grenade or something!”

“Should we use the rocket launchers? Over.”

“Yes! Employ whatever weapons necessary!” Elroy yelled.

Arthur gathered Mrs. Foote, the daughter, and the grandchildren together and indicated to Elroy, who was very red in the face, that he was taking them out of the bunker and heading for the escape vehicle. “Howard,” he told Dirtbag, “you bring Mr. Foote along.” He snatched up another walkie-talkie, so that he could keep in contact. Hustling the women and picking up the children, Arthur opened the bunker door, led them through the tunnel under the barn and ran several hundred yards to the vehicle that waited with its engines running, a Harrier verticaltakeoff-and-landing aircraft illegally purchased from the French government, which wasn't particular about its arms customers. As they reached the Harrier and climbed in, they heard the men of the Patrick Henry unit debating what to blow up. Some had decided to fire their guns in the air as part of the diversion.

“How about blowing up that abandoned barn over there?” asked one.

They cheered the idea so enthusiastically that they couldn't hear Elroy Foote shrieking at them through the walkie-talkie.

“Take off!” Arthur yelled to the Harrier pilot, a man who'd learned in places like Angola and Nicaragua that when somebody told you to take off, you did.

“Wait!” screamed Mrs. Foote. “I'm afraid of flying!”

But nobody paid any attention to her, because they were by that time hurtling straight up in the air as the barn, and the bunker beneath, exploded with an ear-splitting roar.

Given the chaos erupting in and around Freedom Ranch that Memorial Day, it was a miracle there weren't more casualties. One Unknown Soldier accidentally shot off the left buttock of a fellow militiaman. Several of Elroy's troops, three reporters, and six network sound technicians suffered severe hearing loss from the shock of the explosion. Only three deaths were reported. The millionaire rancher Elroy Foote and his bodyguard, a former professional football player, Howard “Dirtbag” Robideaux, had of course been blown to bits by their own men. Mrs. Henrietta Foote had suffered a massive heart attack at the moment the Harrier took off.

The government forces took advantage of the fact that the Unknown Soldiers appeared so stunned by the explosion that they weren't ready when the leader of the FBI SWAT team sped up to the gate in a Chevy Blazer, punched in the access code, and led a parade of vehicles onto Foote's ranch, leaving behind just enough law enforcement officers to restrain the maddened media and deal with the governor's men, who were all shouting into their cellphones. Within an hour, all the Unknown Soldiers were in custody, the ranch's civilian cowboys were being held for questioning, and the local volunteer fire department had arrived to extinguish the burning remains of the barn and the bunker.

The Harrier landed a hundred yards from where it had taken off, and medics rushed in too late to save Mrs. Foote. They had been alerted to the emergency by the FBI agent who had called himself Arthur Stopes. He had a gun to the pilot's head, and had his hands full with Mrs. Pamela Appley, Elroy Foote's daughter. Her parents, she shrieked, were martyrs to the cause of freedom, and the government, she assured FBI Agent Stopes, would pay.

No doubt she was right.

Chapter 32
Oral History

Like everybody else in Wyoming, and many people around the country and the world, Sally Alder watched the spectacle of Freedom Ranch on cable television. Edna had called to tell her to turn on CNN. For a while, it was like O.J.'s Bronco chase all over again—the viewers were just watching, and nothing much was happening. The militiamen stood around with their guns, and the police and the media seemed to be taking their places. Then suddenly, Foote's soldiers started firing their weapons and there was this tremendous blast, followed by insanity. Media crews scurried around trying to get good camera angles, law enforcement officers shouted and ran to their vehicles, ambulances came screeching down the road. The CNN correspondent, who'd dived for cover, screamed a steady stream of voice-over, but couldn't quite keep up with the action. Something had clearly been blown up, but nobody knew what. Before anyone could quite figure out what was happening, the cops had somehow opened the gate to Freedom Ranch, and the militiamen appeared to be surrendering without firing a shot. Sally wondered where Bobby Helwigsen was, and found herself hoping he hadn't been there. After all, she'd met him, and Brit had dated him. Most Americans who watched the debacle were shocked, but Sally mixed in a little guilt and a fair amount of wondering what it all meant for her personally.

Bits of the story emerged over the next few days. A private army that styled itself “The Unknown Soldiers,” financed by the eccentric Elroy Foote, had been stockpiling weapons and holding training exercises in Wyoming for nearly three years. Nobody was completely certain what they stood for, although there was plenty of sloganeering. Three people had died: Foote, his wife, and a former Dallas Cowboy lineman. Most of the members of the group were in custody, but one was still at large. The FBI had been running undercover surveillance of the group, and Foote's attorney, Robert Helwigsen, had come forward to tip the state police. Bobby was getting a lot of face time on TV, looking serious and sincere and generally acting like a hero.

Sally couldn't manage to be entirely sorry about Freedom Ranch. Wyoming, she thought, might have had a little too much Freedom lately, but things were looking up. She no longer had to worry whether she was being stalked by loonies playing soldier, and the Faculty for Academic Freedom had lost their sugar daddy. Bosworth assured the other FAF members that Foote's foundation would go on even if the founder had gone on beyond, but then Mrs. Pamela Appley, Foote's daughter and the acting chief officer of the Foote Freedom Foundation, announced that she was dropping sponsorship of the suit and reviewing the Foundation's activities. The Boz even tried to get his comrades to put up their own money: yeah, right. One FAF member told the
Boomerang, “
Do I look like I'm walking around with a sign on my back that says kick me?” Game over, boys.

At the same time, the demise of the Unknown Soldiers was proving a distraction from what Sally really wanted to do. The newshounds got so desperate for stories that they even started calling her up, trying to flog another story out of the event. The ringing telephone was driving her and Maude and Brit nuts, as they took the house apart, looking for Meg's safety deposit box key.

Sally had called the Centennial Bank and learned that Meg did indeed still have a box in the vault. And yes, said the person who answered the phone, they'd need Meg's key to get access to the contents. Sally knew she could call up Dwayne Langham and ask him if he would lean on somebody to let them into the box, but she didn't want to ask the favor until they'd made a real effort to find the key. So they set to work looking. Maude had come back from Costa Rica, tanned, rested, and on a roll. She knew nothing about the box and had no idea what might be in it. Two days of searching the house brought no results, and they'd resorted to sifting through the papers, looking for obscure clues. They got to where they were Xeroxing the poems and cutting them up to see if anagrams or codes emerged.

Hawk found the three women hard at it one balmy lilac-scented evening, when he'd walked over with a sixpack and some idea of going for a sunset stroll. They were all sitting on the floor of the upstairs office, surrounded by scraps of paper. They looked like a coven in search of a spell. He offered the beers around, popped the top on one, and sat down on the couch to watch them. But he was the kind of person who loved beating everyone at Scrabble, so soon he was sucked into the game. Brit had the poem index she'd made, and was getting ready to take a scissors to it when he grabbed it out of her hand. “Humor me,” he said. “You guys have a head start.”

He sat paging through it slowly, while the three women snipped and shuffled. Brit's index was arranged alphabetically by key words and concepts in each poem (quite a little feat of literary criticism for a poli sci major, he thought). Key words. Key concepts. Hell, he'd read enough of Meg Dunwoodie's poems to know that she was a real fiend for keys.

He looked through until he found the entry for “keys.” There were listings for poems that spoke about two kinds of keys, the kind that opened doors, and the ones on pianos. He thought a minute.

“You know,” he told them, “if there was a piano in this house, I'd look there. Keep the key with the rest of the keys, get it?”

“But there's no piano, so thanks a lot anyway,” Brit said.

Sally looked up and was about to say something equally snide, when her eyes lit on the Blum drawings hanging on the wall, just above and behind Hawk's head. In one, the hands were poised above the keyboard. In two more, the pianist had several fingers on keys. In the last, a single finger brushed a single key. The drawings were hung on nails, with picture wire. She jumped up and with shaking hands, carefully took each off the nail, turned it over.
Brush of the key.
And there it was, fastened to the brown paper backing of the last sketch with yellowing Scotch tape.

Sally and Maude went to the Centennial Bank together, into the vault together. Maude signed in, and the bank clerk found the box. Sally and the bank clerk turned keys together. The door swung open, and Maude slid out the metal box. The bank clerk showed them into a private room and left, shutting the door behind her. They opened the lid, and inside were three tape cassettes and a plain white envelope.

The envelope held a note, written in the disciplined but spidery script of advancing age and dated March, 1989. It said, “I don't know who is reading this, but either you've done some fine puzzle-solving, or the bank has kicked me out of the vault for nonpayment of rent. Maude and Ezra, if you're still alive, you have all my love. Sally Alder, if you continue to survive your errant youth and my heirs have honored my wishes and persuaded you to write my story, you will be needing these tapes. I made them seven years ago and put them away. They will explain a lot. Margaret Parker Dunwoodie.”

The dead speak. The historian's wish fulfilled.

Sally was stunned. Maude told her, “She was determined that you be the one. That's why Ezra and I have done things the way we have.”

“Why?” Sally asked. “What the hell possible reason could she have had? She didn't even know me.”

“Do you think the people in Deadwood didn't know Calamity Jane? Come on, Sally, you were a bit notorious in your day. We always went to the summer concerts in Washington Park. We actually went to a few women's studies events, although you probably didn't notice the old lady and her companion hanging out on the fringe. We heard you and Penny Moss singing together on more than one occasion. I recall you joking about how you'd been blacklisted from the bars, so you were forced to stoop to singing in churches.”

Sally chuckled. That had been one of her favorite lines.

Maude went on. “Meg knew you were giving them hell in the history department, and the university grapevine pegged you as somebody who'd either end up dead in a ditch at twenty-eight, or grow up and get a handle on all that talent. Half of Laramie was amazed when you published your first book and it did so well. The other half wasn't. Meg was in the ‘wasn't' camp.”

Her first book had been published in February of 1989. The Sunday
Times
had given it a big write-up. Even the
Boomerang
had reviewed it. “She followed my career?” Sally asked Maude.

“Didn't you notice her copies of your books? She saw some of herself in you. You both loved to write. You both got out of Laramie. Oh, she wasn't hanging out in bars or having sex with reprobates when she was here, but she understood how a girl could get stuck in a tight place.”

“But she came back,” Sally whispered, her throat very dry.

“She had to come back. And finally, she wasn't sorry. She loved Wyoming. She always understood that nobody is alone in the world, that every person has a chance to make things better or worse for at least
somebody
else.

“Most people make those differences in their kids' lives. For people who don't have kids, there are other choices. Clara McIntyre, Meg's English professor, had changed Meg's life by making it possible for her to leave. Meg had given Ezra and me our chances.” Maude swallowed hard. “As she got older, she didn't know whether anyone would ever appreciate her poetry, but she did know she could make a difference with her money. As far as Meg knew, she'd never really made it as a poet, even though she always believed her work was good. She figured that as a musician who never hit the big-time, you'd have some sympathy for that. And that you'd have the heart and the imagination to find other things that mattered about her life.

“She wanted to give you the chance to return here, and to make your own differences. She asked me lots of times in those last years, when you were in Los Angeles and doing so well, whether I thought you'd want to come back. I told her I honestly had no idea. She made me promise we'd ask.”

Sally burst out crying.

“I knew you'd do that,” said Maude, digging in the back pocket of her jeans and offering a clean bandana.

Sally asked both Maude and Ezra if they wanted to listen to the tapes first, but both declined. “This is your project,” Maude said firmly. “We'll listen to them later.”

So there she sat, alone at a table in the basement, with her laptop, her cassette player, yellow pads and pens, and the three tapes. Each cassette was numbered. Sally reminded herself that what she was about to listen to was a product of memory, and memory, she knew, could be the furthest thing from history. But you needed memory anyway. She began with tape number one.

“My name is Margaret Parker Dunwoodie,” Meg said in the same strong, aging voice Sally had heard on Edna's oral history tapes, “and I am recording this at ten p.m. on July 21, 1982, in the town of Laramie, Wyoming. I am making this tape in secret, because it will reveal stories of crimes committed by people who will never face a court of law. I am one of those people.”

Here, Meg took a long breath. Sally did the same. “My father was a fascist and a traitor. I am not sure, but it may be that my lover was his accomplice. I killed them both.”

“I've often thought that 1929 was a bad year for everyone in the world, except me,” Meg resumed after a long silence. “That was the year I went to Paris. The year I met Giselle Blum and Paul Blum and Marc Sonnenschein. And Ernst Malthus.” Her voice broke on the last name. Meg evidently turned off the recorder for some time, then resumed. “I'd learned some things about life in New York, but I was still pretty much a Wyoming ranch girl at heart. Paris changed all that. No—Ernst changed all that. The first time I ever saw him, he was performing at one of the Blums' Tuesdays. At that time, I didn't even know what it would feel like to want a lover. By the time he'd finished playing
Night and Day
, I knew.”

Sally had planned to take notes on the tapes. The notes could wait. She leaned her elbows on the table, put her chin in her hands, and just listened. “My mother had always told me that good girls made a man wait until marriage. That women needed their rights so that they could compel men to control their baser instincts.” Meg chuckled. “The first time he made love to me, I found out a lot about those baser instincts. I had them, too. I didn't mind a bit.” Sally laughed. Meg continued. “There was so much more. Ernst was everything I wanted. Charming, brilliant, passionate. He loved the mountains as much as I did. It seemed to me that he was ready for anything. He needed to be ready, and so did I. The Nazis made sure of that.”

Meg described their long love affair, spanning the continent and more than a decade, and only occasionally did she descend into pure nostalgia. For four years, Meg and Ernst had lived their lives, separately and together, pretty much freely. They'd met in Paris and Nice and London and Lucerne, arranged rendezvous in Germany and Austria and Italy. They were planning to be married. But everything changed in 1933, when Hitler came to power. They put off the wedding, because Meg refused to become a German citizen, and Ernst didn't feel that he could leave the country permanently. They still managed to find ways to be together, but they knew wherever they went, the Gestapo might well be watching.

“I didn't understand how he managed to go and do whatever he wanted, when I knew all too much about what the Nazis were doing to the German people, turning the Jews into outlaws and murdering them wholesale, terrorizing anyone who might sympathize or resist, watching and striking fast, crushing any spark of humanity. Most of the time, we couldn't talk about it. We never knew if a hotel room might be bugged, or if the person sitting at the next table at a café might be Gestapo. The only times we could speak freely came in remote places—on the tops of mountains, or far out in the countryside, where we'd go for long walks, or take horses, and get far away from all signs of human beings. There, I could ask questions.

“But Ernst didn't give many answers. He insisted he had never joined the Nazi Party, and never would. Yes, he was under pressure to become a party member, but his family was so rich and influential that their position gave him a lot of protection. He had important friends in the foreign office—that was how he could travel. He said there were many people in and out of Germany who were working to make Hitler fail, but he couldn't say who or where they were, or what they planned to do. He could do more good, he said, by appearing to cooperate than by fighting them openly. He'd tell me that he didn't want to endanger me by telling me anything the fascists might want to torture out of me later.