Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

by Tom Robbins

  112.

  BREAKTHROUGHS ON SIWASH RIDGE notwithstanding, there was precious little communication down on the Rubber Rose. All day, attorneys from the ACLU tried to build bridges between the government and the cowgirls, but each bridge was burned before it was crossed.

  As their final and most generous offer in a series of overtures, Justice Department spokesmen at last promised that no charges would be filed against the cowgirls were they to withdraw peacefully and allow the Interior Department to take whatever steps it felt necessary for the present well-being and future preservation of the crane flock. As a sort of bonus, the Assistant Undersecretary of the Interior said that if a bird was killed for an autopsy, it would be later mounted and presented to the Rubber Rose Ranch as a symbol of that place's concern for America's vanishing wildlife.

  “Just what we've always needed,” snapped Delores del Ruby. “A stuffed whooping crane.”

  Yes, Delores was back. And with her return there disappeared any hope for settlement. Many of the pardners, concerned for the safety of themselves and one another, concerned for the birds, concerned, even, for the men at the gates, were growing increasingly willing to accept the government's terms. Bonanza Jellybean herself conceded that the cowgirls had made their point, had made it repeatedly, had made it before a worldwide audience—so there might be little additional to gain by pushing it any further.

  Ah, but Delores. A dark shadow of a woman. With nocturnal eyes. And a midnight voice. A smile like a hiss of asps in the rain. It is said that a long ebony hair curled from the nipple of each of her perfectly formed breasts. Delores was adamant.

  “It isn't for ourselves that we take this stand,” she said, her voice as heavy and slow as the lids of a crocodile. “It isn't for cowgirls.” She flicked her arrow tongue at Jelly. “It's for all the daughters everywhere. This is an extremely important confrontation. This is woman-kind's chance to prove to her enemy that she's willing to fight and die. If we women don't show here and now that we aren't afraid to fight and die, then our enemy will never take us seriously. Men will always know that, no matter how strong our words and determined our deeds, there's a point where we'll back down and give them their way.”

  Cracking her whip to obscure Debbie's gentle protests, Delores paraded proudly before the barricades. “I'm prepared to battle!” she cried. “Furthermore, I'm prepared to win! Victory for every female, living or dead, who's suffered the temporary defeats of masculine insensitivity to their inner lives!”

  A few of the cowgirls cheered. Donna said, “I'll fight the bastards.” Big Red was opening a can of beans with a bowie knife. “I'll fight 'em with bean gas, if necessary,” said Big Red.

  Delores and her whip shared a grin. Said the forewoman, “The sun's going down. Let's those of us not standing watch get some sleep. In the morning we'll plan our fight. Tomorrow afternoon those of you who'd like can join me in the reeds, where the cranes and I will be sharing the last crumbs left in the peyote sack.”

  113.

  IF YOU WANT details of the secret White House whooping crane meeting, you'll have to read the exposé Jack Anderson will write as soon as he can get his hands on the tapes. If there were any tapes. Seymour Hersh says the conference wasn't taped; says that, after the taping experiences of the prior President, nothing will ever be taped in the White House again, not a Mantovani concert or an Xmas package or a sprained ankle—and that is why Seymour Hersh plans no in-depth article on the subject. Face it; you may never get the details of the secret White House whooping crane meeting. Are you positive you want them?

  The author knows generally what took place in the conference room off the Oval Office that morning in late September, and although he's been warned to keep mum, he is going to divulge it here. It ought to satisfy you. Many small streams empty into these pages. I never promised you the Potomac.

  One thing that is certain is that the President, the new President, was an uncertain man that morning. In the salts of his bile, he felt lumpy. Somehow, he had a nagging suspicion that the last President wouldn't have allowed himself to be called into a meeting on whooping cranes and cowgirls. The last President, thought the new President, would have ordered his aides to take whatever action was most politically expedient in regard to the cranes, while he, the last President, never one to relish the intimacy of social problems, jetted off to Peking or Moscow or Cairo to make historical hay from the international situation, which was desperate, as usual. The new President felt cheapened, felt wimpy about being expected to preside over a meeting on long-legged birds. Indeed, he would have refused had he not been informed that Pentagon and Petroleum wished him to confer. New on the job though he was, he sensed that as President he could no more ignore Pentagon and Petroleum than he could as congressman, but he sensed, too, in the bubbles of his bile, that he would regret that goddamned meeting on whooping cranes.

  The interest of the military and the oil lobby in the Rubber Rose affair was recent. Heretofore, the matter was the concern of the justice Department, which sought to end (in its usual fashion) what it regarded as defiance, subversion and criminal misappropriation of federal property, and of the Interior Department, which sought to get the cranes back on the job and out of its hair. When the generals and oil men suggested a different approach, however, Justice and Interior were, for the most part, in accord.

  The meeting opened with the director of the FBI explaining to the new President how the cowgirls had set up their barricades directly in front of the crane flock. “A devilishly shrewd tactic,” he called it, for were federal agents to fire on the young women, the lives of the cranes would be jeopardized. “They're holding the cranes as hostages, as it were,” the FBI chief said. “They've got us over a barrel.”

  He yielded the floor to Pentagon, represented by a four-star general from the Air Force. The general, with facts and figures pulled from a blue plastic folder, explained to the new President that this flock of whooping cranes had been a thorn in the flesh of the military for more than thirty years. Since 1942, by far the finest and most used bombing range in America had been the one on Matagorda Island, off the Gulf Coast of Texas. The majority of the B-52 crews that served in Vietnam had trained over the Matagorda range, for example. In addition, helicopter gunships had made frequent and effective use of Matagorda target runs. Because these whooping cranes winter on Matagorda, or on the nearby mainland across San Antonio Bay in what is known as the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, the Air Force and Army had been frequently blamed by conservationists for the threatened extinction of the birds. Under pressure, even the Interior Department had begun to harass the Air Force about the bombing range. Naval and Coast Guard operations in the area had also been criticized and curbed, said the general. He told the new President that Pentagon considered the cranes detrimental to the best interests of America's defense.

  The new President was not a thing of beauty, though, in truth, he was fairer to look upon than his predecessor. The new President possessed a face that might have comforted a lonely orangutan. One could draw a good likeness of the new President with a weenie dipped in fingerpaints. There was something close to farce in the manner in which the new President nodded his head quasi-sagely at the conclusion of Pentagon's testimony and in the way that head jerked to exaggerated attention when the oil lobbyist, pulling facts and figures from a black leather briefcase, began his spiel.

  It was hardly necessary to remind the new President of the energy crisis, but the petroleum-pusher did so. Then he proceeded to inform the chief executive of large quantities of oil that lay wasting in the seabed because off-shore drilling in the Matagorda-Aransas region had been disallowed due to this one lousy flock of birds, birds that contributed not a copper to the Gross National Product and that held not a feather's weight in negotiations with the Arabs. You get the picture? The new President did. Maybe it was an overstatement to say the whooping cranes were crunchy granola in the bedsheets of the economy, but they were certainly one more obstacle to smoot
hing out that badly rumpled bed.

  Once again, the FBI director took the floor. It was almost certain, said he, that there would be a showdown on the Dakota ranch. He described the so-called cowgirls as fanatical subversives violently opposed to the American way of life. These women wanted bloodshed, he said. They had mocked a court order, had refused to negotiate, were at that very moment pointing firearms, possibly of Communist origin, at government agents.

  It seemed inevitable to the FBI director that federal lawmen would be fired upon. This did not worry the top cop, for the vastly superior firepower of the U.S. marshals and FBI agents would quickly and thoroughly prevail. Furthermore, there might be positive benefits from a shootout. Suppose that, in returning the cowgirl's fire, the marshals and agents should “accidentally” pepper the whooping cranes with shots? Suppose that canisters of extrastrength tear gas ostensibly lobbed at the cowgirls were to land in the midst of the birds, who were known to be fatally susceptible to tear gas? In the process of routing the rustlers, the crane flock could be so decimated that the government would be obliged to capture the few survivors and place them in zoos. Thus, in one fell swoop, the U.S. could rid itself of a band of troublemakers and the whooping crane nuisance. Could the President—in secret, of course—support such an action?

  The new President wished he was on the golf course, wished he had a glass of whiskey, wished an aide would hand him a statement to read, wished this and wished that, but no fairy godmother attended the new President. It was September 29, Brigitte Bardot's birthday; perhaps all the wish-granters were in France waiting for Brigitte Bardot to blow out the candles on her cake.

  At last the President opened his banana-biters to concede that the plan had merit, but that he did not believe the public would stand for federal agents shooting teen-aged girls.

  The half-dozen others in the conference room disagreed. They pointed out that these girls were lawbreakers, armed, dangerous, immoral, disruptive influences, enemies of the public good—not unlike the young women who had been annihilated in Los Angeles. There would be no more of a public outcry than in the L.A. executions, and much less than in the suppression at Kent State. Moreover, with a little help from the press, the government should have no difficulty in blaming the tragic fate of the whooping cranes on the violent, lawless actions of the cowgirls. The fair-minded majority would believe the girls had gotten their just deserts.

  “Besides,” said the man whom the new President had nominated to be the new Vice President, “it doesn't make any difference politically. The bleeding-hearts raked me over the coals for permitting the rioters at Attica Prison to be, ah, severely dealt with, but it hasn't hurt my career one iota. Mr. President, maybe you underestimate the moral sense of the American people.”

  It was a convincing argument, though the way it was phrased did nothing to cream the texture of the presidential bile. The new President rolled his eyes from Pentagon to Petroleum. He was trapped and knew it. Narrowing the beam on his monkey lamps, to suggest that he was both thoughtful and independent, he said, “I'll have to give it some consideration.” He stood with an amateur actor's interpretation of dignity, banging his thigh painfully against the conference table. Expensive handtooled shoes, which he remembered now as having been a gift from the oil lobby, bore him from the room.

  As soon as possible, he exchanged those shoes for golf shoes. Before he left for Burning Tree Country Club, the new President called in his most trusted aide. “In two hours—no, better make it three—I want you to tell FBI that I have decided to approve Operation Whooper Pooper.”

  The new President went out on the green Earth and knocked a little ball around.

  114.

  SISSY HANKSHAW GITCHE never made it back to Siwash Lake. No thumb was large enough, no mastery of movement so perfect, no will over landscape and its travelers of such strength as to get her there.

  She was turned back by U.S. marshals and FBI agents, who had parked armored vehicles on the hilltop and now squared off against the cowgirls from close range. The federal forces had held her for questioning, and when she was released, it was in the sour custody of a marshal who escorted her to the Rubber Rose gates and pointed her toward Mottburg.

  It took more than that to stop her, of course. She doubled back along the base of Siwash Ridge and into the southern hills, intending to approach the lake from the eastern or prairie side, the only side that was not now guarded by the government. With every step she took, however, the wind increased by some large fraction of a knot. By the time she began to angle onto the prairie, Dakota had its dust up. Like a fog of knife tips, like a hurricane of harsh ants, the dust enveloped her, bit her, choked her, blinded her. She fought the storm, but it would not stand still. She hitchhiked it, but it would not take her with it.

  The storm had no sense of humor. There is little in Nature that does. Maybe the human animal has contributed really nothing to the universe but kissing and comedy—but by God that's plenty.

  The storm reminded Sissy of that creature that is simultaneously the most dangerous and most pitiful thing on Earth: a scared old man with a title. It was more frustration than fear that drove her back to Siwash Ridge, a refuge whose frenzied heights occasionally showed themselves through the dust. It took her hours to get there, and when she finally crawled, exhausted, into the cave, she felt as if she'd been sandpapered in the hobby shop of Hell.

  The Chink sought to apply some varnish—yam oil, to be exact—but Sissy pushed him away. “Not now,” she said. “I'm sending all my energy to Jellybean. I want her to feel that I'm standing with her in this crazy thing that she does.”

  Love grew thumbs. And hitchhiked unmolested through storm and stormtroopers to the lake. It arrived at about the same instant as Delores's Third Vision. About the same time as a very battered, very skinny, very pooped-out snake with a card—the jack of hearts—under its tongue.

  115.

  WE HAVE A REPTILE in our totem. It has been there since Eden. It lives at the base of the brain and has a special relationship to women. It is associated with the dark world, dark consciousness, the necessary opposite of light. However, it does not function as a symbol because it is too unpredictable. In a male, its venom can cause violence or art. In a female, it produces a peculiar madness that men do not understand. In children, it is the little red wagon painted blue.

  Delores ate seven peyote buttons, after cutting away their poisonous tufts. She gave three apiece to Donna, LuAnn, Big Red and Jody. That left only four buttons in the sack. Not enough for the cranes, who already were showing signs of coming down—restlessness, wariness, noise—and none of the other cowgirls wished to get high. So Delores ate the last four plants herself. Peyote is ugly to look upon (the “buttons” resemble grungey green Naugahyde hassocks for the splayed feet of malevolent gnomes) and horrid to taste. Its seven alkaloids produce seven varieties of abdominal cramps (Within an hour, five cowgirls were puking) and dirty burps of bitterness.

  Nauseated, Donna, Big Red, LuAnn and Jody wandered around the lakeshore, batting their eyes at everything that moved, which was everything. Their faces were hot, their legs rubbery, their thoughts soaring. The armored cars on the hill seemed ridiculous, childish. The way the wind kept accelerating, never content with this speed or that, struck them as funny, too. But the wind has no sense of humor, and when billows of dust began to rise, the stoned-out cowgirls took refuge in the barricades, huddled together in an anxious stupor, perhaps reliving the dusty moments of Creation.

  But Delores . . . Delores lay in the reeds at the water's edge. Asleep yet awake, she had sunk so deeply into the hole in her mind that gale and dust could not follow her. Jellybean gave up on trying to rouse her and lead her to shelter, leaving her there, spattered with green vomit, to communicate with her totem. Delores moaned. Her hand opened and closed on the handle of her whip. She seemed about to crawl on her belly, to slither into the wind-whipped waters of the pond.

  It was there in that state that they found h
er. “They?” Niwetúkame the Divine Mother and the snake from the message service. Had they come together? Were they in cahoots, the serpent and the goddess? What was said? How was the playing card dealt? Was Delores shown jewels or hummingbirds or strikes of lightning? Did she meet her double? What business was transacted? Was it stunning and frightful, or was there an air of show biz about it? Delores has never said.

  Long after the vision of St. Anthony and Paul's epileptic flashes on the Damascus road, long after the voices spoke to Joan of Arc and Blake had his eyeballs seared with heavenly wonderments, long after Edgar Cayce's prophetic trances and Ginsberg's glimpse of the hip angel, there came the three visions of Delores del Ruby, the third of which sent her stumbling into the barricades, in the dark of night, at the end of a Dakota dust storm, to snatch the rifles from the hands of her cowgirl sisters.

  Her black eyes were shining like the wet crowns of drakes; her face had softened into a sweet mask of electric blood. In the moonlight, she stood out like a city surrounded by flames. She walked as if in sleep. With a slow underwater strangeness, she threw guns into the dust-covered grass.

  No one dared question her actions; no one so much as thought to question her actions. She obviously was operating under divine authority. She had abandoned her whip.

  When she spoke, it was as if someone had filed the burrs off her consonants and fluffed out her vowels. She spoke simply, but with intensity.

  “The natural enemy of the daughters is not the fathers and the sons,” she announced.

  “I was mistaken.

  “The enemy of women is not men.

  “No, and the enemy of the black is not the white. The enemy of capitalist is not communist, the enemy of homosexual is not heterosexual, the enemy of Jew is not Arab, the enemy of youth is not the old, the enemy of hip is not redneck, the enemy of Chicano is not gringo and the enemy of women is not men.