The Oregon Experiment (12 page)

Thirty feet from the tracks, the inspectors told the cops to arrest them all. After preparing another ticket for an unauthorized railroad crossing, the cops radioed the station to find out how much the fine should be. Jim reached down for the ticket and tucked it in his pocket with the other one.

Twenty feet from the tracks, the inspectors told Sequoia they could cross, but not until they posted a $20,000 bond for damages. “Unlikely,” she said.

Ten feet from the tracks, the lead inspector stood in their path in his white jumper, reflector vest, and white hard hat, seeming to fancy himself the tank-stopping student in Tiananmen Square. But when the bulldozer’s headlights glared in his eyes, he reevaluated his commitment, took several quick measurements and flash photos to augment a lawsuit, and slunk aside.

The church rolled over the tracks and down the alley. Kenny climbed the walls, serving as lookout as they passed easily under the power lines. He and Jim and five or six others had removed the roof in sections that afternoon. It would increase refurbishing costs, but free labor was abundant and Jim had a solid lead on a barn coming down in Tangent with good straight rafters.

Jim pulled the bulldozer onto the street, then stopped for a moment to collect his $120 “non-pneumatic tires on the roadway” ticket. Everyone
had agreed to put up twenty-five bucks apiece for the expected fines, and they hadn’t come close to that yet. The police flipped on their blue lights. An official escort.

They were deep in the middle of the night. The fog had begun to roll in with wisps of ocean air. Houses lit up. Curtains parted. Sequoia would have loved to trade places with one of these people submerged in sleep, awakening from a dream, and going to the window to see the old church gliding down the street. It was magical. And they’d done it. Even Ron had surrendered.

Or so they thought. At the end of the block, on the street in front of the plot of city park where the church would come to rest, a car was parked: a twenty-year-old Volvo station wagon plastered with bumper stickers for Dennis Kucinich, divestment in South Africa, whales, and impeachment. Ron’s. He leaned against it, arms crossed.

They sounded like an invading army. The phone poles rolled, the bulldozer tracks clattered, the engines rumbled. More lights popped on in houses. Jim stopped his dozer blade a foot from Ron’s bumper and stood up. “Move the goddamn car, Ron!” he shouted.

Ron cupped a hand behind his ear as if he didn’t hear.

“I’m tired!” Jim shouted. “We’re all tired.”

Ron ignored him.

“Three strikes, Ron!”

Ron’s arms tightened across his chest. The machinery and the phone poles, the twenty dear friends and neighbors, the church, and even the blue police lights were perfectly still, all awaiting Ron’s next move.

With a little rev in the engine, Jim lowered the blade, eased forward into the rear end of Ron’s Volvo, and added the car to the caravan, pushing it to the end of the block while its owner stood back helplessly.

Some tricky maneuvering was required to swing into the park, but in another half hour they had the church in position. Pete set up the jacks, and shortly before dawn, working through the fog, the new community center—although propped on temporary timbers—sat on the land where it would remain.

Cheers and hugs, hoots and sighs. Sequoia was wildly happy and gushingly grateful, especially to Jim Furdy, whom she gave a long and special hug.

At home, she kissed Trinity and Chezzi, still sleeping, and out back, with the morning’s first light whitening the fog, lowered herself into the
hot tub. “Bite me, America Sanchez,” she said out loud, letting her arms float. They’d done it.

And now for the PNSM. The professor would get them to stop
formulating
and start
doing
. Sure, at the meeting he couldn’t hide his reluctance. He had his own reasons for being there—they all did. But she could sense his passion. And she saw how he responded to hers. He was the one, she was sure. She’d just have to bring him along.

Naomi was getting close—two more weeks. In bed beside Scanlon, she lay curled on her side, deep in sleep, as she had been for over an hour. Tonight, like most nights these last few weeks, they watched a video after dinner, Naomi dozed off halfway through, and, with the sink full of dishes, they stumbled into bed.

But as soon as he switched off the light, Scanlon felt like he’d downed a pot of coffee, his anxiety like the frenzied clacking of a thousand cockroaches. Anxiety about money, the baby, his marriage, the semester, his research. Pull the trigger, Fenton had said. A quick publication or three. Scanlon hadn’t spoken with Sam Belknap since the scolding.

He’d been exploring micro-secession, arguments against “bigness,” the feasibility of functional independence. Last week he’d reread Sam’s book on the Basques and Liam Peterson’s study of East Timor. He didn’t believe that the PNSM’s plans for secession of the entire Pacific Northwest had legs, but something no bigger than the county and no smaller than a Douglas neighborhood would at least be a rich academic exercise worthy of a quick publication. This afternoon when Hank phoned Scanlon to suggest a strategy chat, the obvious subtext was to get him on board. And they were set to meet in the morning at nine.

Not too far off, sirens wailed across the night—unusual for Douglas on a Wednesday—and he thought of the firemen relaxing in their rows of corduroy Barcaloungers until the call came in, then rushing for the pole. He raised his head to see the clock over Naomi’s shoulder: 12:45. He pulled the covers up tight to their chins, still amazed at how in Oregon, even now with days approaching ninety, most nights dropped below fifty.

But the sirens didn’t let up, and dogs down the street had started howling. Hank would cancel if they had to fight a fire all night; by morning they’d all be sleeping or spraying down trucks and drying out hoses.

He tried listening to his breath to relax. Naomi got pregnant at
Thanksgiving, and for those first couple months—until the job offer in February—he often woke up in a panic. Down in the deep sea of sleep, pressure worked into his dreams, pumping him full of worry and fear, his heart pounding, surreal pictures surging by with flashes of those old dreams where the grandfatherly doctor becomes the torturer he’s fleeing, until he broke through the surface, awake, gasping for air. How would he pay for a changing table, car seat, jogging stroller, violin lessons, braces? It was already adding up—prenatal vitamins, home pregnancy tests, a Pea in the Pod maternity dress. Luckily this past year they’d had health insurance, but plenty of years they’d let it lapse. Naomi had never turned her business as a perfume buyer into much money. Not that he blamed her, it was just a fact. She’d done well in New York as a fragrance designer, but that was before they met. Scanlon knew he lifted her spirits, that she admired the apparent ease with which he found everyday happiness. He’d sprung her from a moldering life, waiting in her apartment for her nose to return, paralyzed with fear that it wouldn’t. The night they met he told her he’d taken a one-year position at Union College in Schenectady, and it wasn’t until they’d moved there together that he understood he’d provided her with an escape from New York. Her reluctance to leave the city was only a show. Without her nose, unable to work at what she loved, New York had become an oppressive, day-and-night reminder of illness, failure, and loss, her sensual life hacked out of her. She was dying to get out, and have a place to go.

Moving to Oregon was no different. Although she would never admit it, she’d wanted to come, to put even more distance between herself and the gaping stare of her former life. But now that the genius within her had awakened, she could have that life and career again. He’d lost his role as her surrogate nose, and he missed that intimacy, missed being the intermediary between Naomi and her sensuality.

And it didn’t help that in the last month she’d completely lost interest in sex. He’d never felt more distant from her.

A car raced down the street. His eyes shot open, and he thought he saw a blue light—police lights—slice around the edge of the blinds and across their bedroom wall. A branch from the honey locust tree tapped on the window with a gust of wind.

Naomi slept through just about anything, so he tried listening to
her
breathing, to be soothed by
her
rhythms of sleep, letting his eyes settle closed, and it seemed that despite the sirens in the distance and the dogs
up and down the street, he was tired enough to drift slowly off, the tension slowly dropping from his body and mind …

Three sharp knocks spun him around in bed. He looked at the clock—1:07—and sat bolt upright, silently holding his breath as three more knocks came faster, more urgent. He slid from under the covers and into his robe, then tiptoed through darkness down the hall to the living room and peeked around the corner. Squinting, he sneaked back to the bedroom for his glasses. Five quick raps this time, harder and louder, and in the moonlight he could now see a figure through the glass in the back door, and he froze: one o’clock in the morning, a police car flying down the street, an intruder in their backyard banging on the door. Naomi’s bathing suit was hanging over the Adirondack chair, and she’d left a baby-clothes catalog on the seat. Scanlon’s blood rushed with the full force of his role as man of the house.

The phone was at the other end of the couch. It would only take a moment to call 911, and maybe the room was dark enough to conceal him. As he made a dash, one eye on the back door, the intruder waved furiously, pressing his nose and forehead to the window. Scanlon took a slow step toward the door, then another, peering cautiously through the glass …

It was Clay, the anarchist. He felt a ripple of relief but held on to the phone, still considering making the call.

Then Clay reached into his pocket and produced a fat joint. Scanlon was in a tight spot. Maybe he didn’t need the police chatting with Clay in his living room. He set down the phone, put his hand on the knob, and retracted the deadbolt.

It occurred to him that Clay could be freaking out on crystal meth or whatever drug anarchists favored. (He should know that, and made a mental note to find out.) He cracked the door. “What do you want?”

“Sorry it took so long,” Clay told him.

Scanlon said nothing.

“The shit I owe you. The pot.” He waved the joint in Scanlon’s face.

“What are you doing here in the middle of the night?”

Blue lights flashed by the side of the house, darting across the marionberry vines. Clay crowded in closer to the door. “Could I have a glass of water?”

Scanlon stood firm.

“I’m very thirsty,” he said. “I’d really owe you.”

Against all good sense, Scanlon stepped back, letting the door swing
open, and Clay hurried past, reeking of gasoline. He looked around the room, apparently taking note of windows and exits, then sat on the floor in a shadow beside the fireplace and the overstuffed chair.

Scanlon reached to switch on the lights, then sensed he shouldn’t and left them off. He dragged the ottoman over and sat down with his elbows leaning on his knees. “What’s going on, Clay?”

“Nothing. I was in the neighborhood and wanted to deliver your pot.”

“Gimme a break.”

He stuck the joint in his lips. “You want to burn one?”

“No, I don’t.” Scanlon’s robe had fallen open, and he pulled it closed. “I want you to tell me what you’re doing here, then leave. Or just leave. My wife’s sleeping and I should be too.”

Clay’s fingertips fidgeted with the laces of his black boots. “What about”—his head jerked twice—“that glass of water?”

Scanlon sighed, then went to the kitchen and ran the tap. When he got back with the glass, an orange ember glowed bright in the dark room until Clay released a plume of smoke.

“Asshole!” Scanlon said, so loudly that he was afraid he might’ve wakened Naomi. But only two nights ago they’d read in the
Pregnancy Journal
that secondhand smoke in month nine can damage the baby’s fine-motor skills. He lowered his voice. “Not in the house. My wife’s pregnant.”

“Just one more hit,” and Clay sucked on the joint again.

“Get out of here!” Scanlon demanded. “I’m not screwing around.”

Clay moved to get up, then leaned forward and squinted at Scanlon’s midsection, gesturing like ET with a bent finger. “Bummer,” he said, holding his lungs full of smoke. “I hope my cock doesn’t get all meek-looking when I get old.”

Scanlon glanced down at his penis bobbing out of his robe, then wrapped the robe tight and cinched the belt. He’d had enough of his anarchist. “Move it, asshole! Get out!” He’d been so high when Clay smashed the garage window that he didn’t fully compute that this stranger had vandalized his new house right in front of him. He should’ve reported him to Edmund or thrown the little shit against the side of the garage and hit him, but instead he’d let this menace into his home in the name of scholarly research. Sam Belknap was right to be disappointed.

Clay swiped the ember on the side of his boot.

Scanlon raised a fist. “Get the fuck out of my house.”

And then a flashlight beam slashed across the side windows. Scanlon looked around, confused. Two cops were searching his backyard. He thought first of the cloud of pot smoke hovering in the room, then of the general guilt that always seized him around cops, and then of the fact that the lights were out—a couple chums getting high in the dark. If he turned the kid over to them now, how would he explain?

But then he thought, This is
my
house. Cops have barged into
my
backyard. “You stay there,” he said to Clay, who’d scooched farther back into the shadow of the chair.

The cops were taking short, quick steps, bending forward with their heads lowered like bloodhounds. When Scanlon flipped on the patio light, their faces turned toward the house. He opened the back door and stepped onto the concrete stoop, about to speak, but the cops beat him to it.

“Have you seen anyone suspicious?” one said.

“Male. Five-ten,” the other one clarified. “Black clothes with anarchist insignia.”