Cheryl followed her out, too, but as she placed a pleading hand on MacKenzie’s arm, she shook it off and continued on her way. Only once we were several blocks away from the church did she slow down. Cheryl had stayed behind. I guess she wanted to hear the end of the sermon.
“How can they believe that stuff, Henny?” MacKenzie asked me. I had never seen her so upset before. Angry red patches had flared up on her cheeks, her voice was trembling, and her eyes were watery. “They know me. They’ve taken care of me my whole life. When Dad was drunk, I could always go there. And Cheryl! She just sat there and listened to that crap. But I guess…not everyone knows me. They’ve probably never met a gay person before. I shouldn’t have brushed off Cheryl’s hand like that. I know she means well. She does, doesn’t she?”
I quickly nodded, unsure of what else I could do.
“They’ll change their minds,” MacKenzie said stubbornly. She still believed it then.
* * *
By that point, the campaign had finally made its way into the corridors of school. One of the teachers had started wearing a No to Measure 9 badge and had been reported to the board. After that, all of the teachers were officially neutral. In the halls, however, Yes to Measure 9 badges started to appear on our classmates’ jackets. It was as if everyone had developed an interest in politics overnight.
MacKenzie was much braver than I was. When one of the tough kids loomed over us and accused us of being gay lovers, she walked straight toward him. I hid behind her. I’m not proud of it, but that’s what happened.
I don’t think I had ever felt as relieved as I did when Buddy intervened. “Pick on someone your own size,” he yelled, and the tough kid suddenly seemed much less tough. Faced with Buddy’s barely repressed aggression, he quickly walked away.
“Damn fag,” Buddy muttered, but then he glanced over his shoulder, embarrassed. “Uh, sorry, MacKenzie. Old habit.”
* * *
Still, the worst part about the campaign was the adults’ reaction to it. They had always been so comforting and reasonable and kind, but they suddenly seemed to have been blinded by hate.
They gathered around a stand in town, yelling their message to passersby, their body language aggressive and their faces twisted.
“Do you think homosexuals should have special rights?”
“Do you want homosexuals, pedophiles, and sadists teaching your children?”
“Did you know that 90 percent of homosexuals are pedophiles?”
Many people simply walked on by, but quite a few stopped, and no one argued with them. MacKenzie and I watched them from further down the street. I don’t know why. Maybe we wanted to torture ourselves.
“Why should homosexuals have special protection? There are people here in town—decent, God-fearing people—who can’t find a job. There are old folks who are all on their own, with no one to care for them. Poor people, right here in our town. And we’re supposed to protect homosexuals? Do you think they should have special rights just because they’ve chosen to live unnatural, sinful lives? They’re rich, too. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Fact: they earn far more than the average American.”
I pulled MacKenzie’s arm to lead her away, but she wouldn’t budge. I don’t think she could understand how people who claimed to believe in their ideals had no problem lying for them, and she definitely couldn’t understand how anyone could fall for those lies.
MacKenzie was brave. She was magnificent. She marched straight over to their stand and started debating with them. I hesitated for half a second, and by the time I made it over to her, she was surrounded by a group of agitated adults, all much bigger and older than her, fervently arguing with everything she said.
“God doesn’t hate the sinner; he hates the sin,” one of them said, their face far too close to MacKenzie’s.
“I just don’t believe in special rights for homosexuals,” said another.
“It’s for their own good. We can’t let them think that what they’re doing is natural or right.”
I tried to push over to her, but a man kept getting in my way. He angled his body so that the others wouldn’t be able to see, and then he grabbed MacKenzie’s arm—hard, so hard that it left a mark—and hissed, “Fag-loving bitch.”
MacKenzie grimaced.
“You’re going to burn in hell.”
I finally managed to get over to her, and she tore her arm away from him. I grabbed her other arm and gently led her away. The marks on her skin had started to turn reddish-blue. Clear impressions of five adult fingers.
MacKenzie rubbed her arm. “If they want to hurt me, they’ll have to try harder than that,” she said. “I guess they’ve forgotten how well my dad raised me.”
But I was fighting back tears. Me, who hadn’t even done anything.
Then MacKenzie froze. I was walking so close to her that I felt her body tense. I anxiously glanced back, and then relaxed. Cheryl was the only person walking toward us.
I can still remember the relief I felt when I saw her. I was blinking frantically. Oddly enough, the relief made me want to cry even more. I was desperately longing for an adult to come and save us, someone kind who could fix everything, stop the campaign, make the world normal again.
But Cheryl was making her way over to the stand. Her T-shirt that day read Yes to Measure 9.
I instinctively moved in front of MacKenzie to shield her from the sight. It was no use, of course. Cheryl was walking toward us. MacKenzie saw the T-shirt only moments later.
“She…she can…go to hell,” I said.
Chapter 40
A Break-In Under Cover of Darkness
For the first few days, the protesters outside the motel don’t have any real impact on business. If anything, we actually have more people in the restaurant than usual, as people from town come over here to watch them. The parking lot fills up with cars, and the guests in the restaurant look more like a theater audience, their faces turned toward the road and the show on the other side.
The protest doesn’t seem to be stopping people from checking in, either. Most of our guests arrive in the evening, when the protesters have gone home for the day. For several nights now, we’ve had ten to fifteen rooms filled, which is good for this time of year. If any of the guests are still here when the Sacred Faith Evangelical Church members arrive the next morning, they don’t seem to care. They’re mostly truck drivers and weary businessmen who have driven many, many miles, and being faced with Christian fanatics before breakfast doesn’t seem to faze them.
The only real difference is that Michael and I are sleeping on the couch in the office now. It was his idea, but MacKenzie and Camila are happy to have him there. I guess the threats have had an impact on us after all.
We spend several days in a kind of tense balance of terror. Rooms are cleaned and keys are handed over as usual. Alejandro helps out in the restaurant, keeping the hungry public fed, and the protesters chant their slogans and eat their packed lunches, heading home once the sun goes down.
But then, one week after they first arrived, they finally come back at night.
* * *
I notice the headlights first. It’s two in the morning when they slowly pull up on the edge of the road with their hazard lights flashing. Shadowy figures climb out of the cars, find their flashlights, and start lifting objects out of the trunks. Something catches the light, but I can’t tell what it is from where I’m standing, and I don’t want to leave the safety of check-in to go over there alone.
“Michael!” I shout over my shoulder as another car slows down and comes to a halt. “Wake up!”
I guess he hears them, too, because in the office, Michael stirs. A moment later, he is standing beside me in the gloom by the automatic doors, squinting out at the silent, ominous figures. They line up, dark and serious, like the first wave of an army.
He i
nstinctively reaches for the phone and dials MacKenzie’s number. “I think we’ve got a problem,” he says. Before long, both MacKenzie and Camila have joined him in reception.
“Have you called the cops?” is the first thing MacKenzie asks.
“I didn’t know what you would want to do.”
“Well, I’m damn sure not going over there to talk to them.”
Again, I see something catch the light. It’s big and metallic and…round.
Michael squints toward it. “Is that…a pan lid?”
Suddenly, a wall of noise hits us: pan lids, ladles, even a couple of real cymbals. They must have borrowed those from the church choir.
“What the hell?” MacKenzie mutters.
One by one, the lights come on in the rooms. Doors start to open.
“Shut up!” one man shouts, sounding drowsy. He hasn’t bothered to get dressed and is standing in the doorway in all his naked glory, dramatically lit from behind. Even from a distance, his hairy body is enough to make the protesters fall silent.
Dad sticks his head around his door and says, “I’ve called the police.” For once, that is the right thing to do.
The noise starts up again with renewed strength, and anything else he has to say is drowned out by the banging and rattling. I glance toward the trucks and cars in the parking lot and hope that none of our guests are armed. A few have gotten dressed and are now outside; MacKenzie and Michael are desperately trying to stop them from crossing the road to fight with the protesters. Camila calls the police again.
From one side of the road, the swearing comes thick and fast. From the other, Bible quotes and noise. It sounds much worse out here in the parking lot. Even I can feel the noise starting to get on my nerves, and I don’t even have nerves anymore.
The sheriff arrives after half an hour, flanked by three patrol cars. One pulls into our parking lot, and the others park by the protesters. Our side makes do with muttering about those damn idiots over there, and the guests cast a last few murderous glances over the road before allowing MacKenzie to herd them back into their rooms.
The protesters aren’t anywhere near as compliant. They continue to bang their pots and pans in poor Sheriff Ed’s face, until eventually he shrugs and tells the deputies to round them up.
We stand in silence in the parking lot, watching blankly. It should be funny. One of the deputies tries to get a woman in her fifties to drop a pan lid; another is hit by a ladle being brandished by a scrawny fifteen-year-old boy. The deputy’s thick jacket takes the brunt of the blow, but it annoys him all the same. Eventually, he just grabs the boy and forces him into the back of his car. The last I see of him are two skinny, flailing legs.
But we still aren’t laughing. Not even when two deputies have to work together to disarm a housewife clutching a pair of cymbals. She runs around and around the patrol car, smashing them together, until eventually the deputies close in on her from both sides.
There is something ominous about the furious commitment the protesters are displaying, a sense that something is being stepped up right before our eyes, something we might already have lost control of. It’s unnerving to watch a farce that no one is laughing at.
Sheriff Ed crosses the road and comes over to talk to us. “I’ll release them as soon as they’ve calmed down. Even though they did technically resist arrest and attack a police officer.”
“With a ladle,” MacKenzie murmurs blankly.
“Damn it, this isn’t funny.”
“No,” she agrees.
“No good will come from us charging them. We’ll just end up creating more martyrs.”
MacKenzie looks over at the packed police cars on the other side of the road. “I think we already have,” she says.
“We appreciate it, Sheriff,” Camila quickly adds.
The sheriff wearily rubs his face. “Don’t thank me yet. This isn’t over.”
But the night is, at least, quiet again. We look at one another in surprise as that dawns on us. In the rooms behind us, the lights go out one by one, and once the police cars have driven away, we stay where we are in the sudden silence.
No one seems quite sure what we should do now.
* * *
The next morning, I decide to pay the Sacred Faith Evangelical Church a visit. It’s a chance to spy on the enemy. I stand across the road, on Church Street, watching the feverish activity. The parking lot is full of cars, many with license plates from Montana, the Dakotas, Idaho, and Wyoming. One of them has come all the way from Arkansas.
Bob and Derek are standing just a few yards away from me.
As yet, Bob hasn’t taken an official stance either for or against the campaign. He has been a politician long enough to know that he just needs to wait out the storm. But unlike Derek, he lets his real feelings show.
“Christ, looks like we’re importing loonies again,” he says. “Don’t we have enough of our own?”
“Brothers and sisters from other congregations,” Derek finds himself saying. Then he adds: “How were we meant to know it would lead to such a fuss? Seems like people are really inspired by it, though, and surely all publicity is good publicity… Damn it, all hell’s broken loose, hasn’t it?”
“That’s just what the pastor wants.”
“They’re not even from around here. And they think they have the right to criticize our motel? That almost makes me question this whole thing. What does some guy from Idaho know about our town?”
Bob raises an eyebrow.
Derek glances at him and then, with deliberate nonchalance, says, “Have you been over to the motel lately?”
“So people can tell me I’m going to burn in hell? No thank you.”
“Ah.”
“Why don’t you just go see Stacey?”
“I doubt these folks would appreciate me creeping around at the motel.”
“You could call her. You know, the telephone. Great invention.”
“Seems like the whole country has taken an interest,” Derek continues. “All the big TV channels and papers have called.”
Bob turns to Derek. “Tell me you didn’t say yes. Tell me you haven’t agreed to go on national TV and become a celebrity madman.”
“The pastor is doing all the interviews. Besides, we don’t trust the mainstream media. It’s all biased.”
“You sound like a parrot,” Bob sighs.
“What you mean is that I don’t sound like your parrot,” Derek tells him. For once, Bob has no comeback.
I decide to go for a quick walk around the church itself. Inside, there are people making signs, compiling petitions, brewing coffee, and photocopying leaflets. Laughing, too—the atmosphere is relaxed and festive. It’s an opportunity for them to see friends and acquaintances from conferences, online forums, and Christian holidays. A few seem to be staying with members of the congregation, but others have brought air mattresses and sleeping bags, and are camping out in the church building. Cheryl is rushing around, in her element, her organizational skills being put to the test. Today’s T-shirt reads The Motel Should Pine Away!
There and then, I come as close to hating someone as I’ve ever been. She’s actually enjoying this.
* * *
Back at the motel, the protesters are chanting away like always.
“You’re going to burn in hell!” they shout.
“Ah, home sweet home!” MacKenzie replies as she pushes the cleaning cart in front of her.
“Repent your sins before it’s too late!” they yell after her as she strips the sheets in room 12.
“My sins are the one thing I don’t regret!” she shouts back, her arms full of laundry.
They even shout at Dolores when she steps outside for some fresh air.
“No pancakes for you!” she tells them, indignant, storming back inside.
Alejand
ro has been snapping pictures from every possible angle. He prefers to capture absurd, humorous moments, like a protester holding a placard bearing righteous Bible quotations taking a bite of cheese sandwich, or one trying to juggle a placard, thermos flask, and coffee cup. But even his camera is powerless to avoid the ugly, frightening side of the protest: ordinary faces twisted in collective fury.
The tragic thing is that they’re wearing us down. There must be at least a hundred people out there now, and no one wants to eat with a Christian mob screaming outside. Watching them is no longer amusing; they’ve now become a serious threat to a person’s digestion. No one wants to be told that they’re going to hell, and certainly not on an empty stomach.
“How long am I supposed to keep cooking food that no one is eating?” Dolores complains.
“Just hold out a little longer,” Camila pleads. “They’ll get bored eventually.”
Dolores pats her on the shoulder. “Don’t you worry, I’m not someone who gives in. But it’s a waste of my talents; that’s all I’m saying.”
The only diner who isn’t staying at the motel is Buddy. Out of sheer solidarity, he starts eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner with us. Aside from him, Dad, Paul, and Stacey are the only others. Paul just shakes his head and works on his veranda, Stacey shouts back at them—of course—and Dad has stopped going on his walks, taking refuge in the restaurant instead. He still hasn’t started wearing Stacey’s red coat, but he does keep giving her thoughtful glances, and he even goes as far as to nod approvingly when she shouts something deeply inappropriate at the protesters. But then he seems to realize what he is doing and makes sure his face is suitably blank when she looks in his direction. The two of them are alone in the restaurant. Even Clarence has started to sneak off to the pub as early as he can.
People have stopped checking in, too. Every evening, the protesters are there with their flashlights and placards, though they no longer have their pan lids. One of the deputies keeps an eye on them, but what is he supposed to do? No cars stop. The protesters keep coming, more every day.
Check in at the Pine Away Motel (ARC) Page 32
