Sweet Creek

by Lee Lynch

  “Need some sticks,” he told her.

  “Are you ragging the customers again, Jeepy?” Sami had finally gotten out of bed and strutted through the back door.

  The dude smiled brightly at Sami and beat a tattoo on the doorframe with his sticks. “Wish you were queer for me, Sami.”

  “If I turned bi for anybody, it’d be for you, Ahmed.”

  When the guy left, Sami lifted Jeep off the ground in a bear hug, wetly kissing on her.

  “Give it a rest, girlfriend,” Jeep complained.

  “That’s for opening up,” said Sami with a dragon-breath yawn.

  “You were still snoring.”

  “Why don’t you get me some wake-up, Jeepster.”

  She surprised herself when she said, “I’ll go get you a Starbucks, but I’m not copping anything that comes in a vial or a plastic bag.”

  “Hey, this is Y2K. Ditch the attitude, my little off-road vehicle. I’m on empty and not in street drag.”

  “I’m not taking a chance on messing up my life so you can have a toot. I don’t think they allow violins in the penitentiary.”

  Sami raised her arms, her slouch almost simian. “Didn’t I rescue you from your little desert ghost town? Give you four walls and a job? Don’t I get no freakin’ respect?”

  “You do, your habit doesn’t. You can’t even start the day without a hit anymore.”

  “What a little punk. At least you’re not weak in bed.”

  Jeep had left the store, slapped her skateboard to the sidewalk, and pushed off toward Starbucks. That was the thing about Sami. When she liked you she gave everything she had to give. You had to be grateful to someone like that, but, Jeep realized—and maybe she’d made the decision in her sleep—that it wasn’t cool to let Sami go too far. A person could lose her soul in the process. Since she played music from that same site, she wasn’t letting anyone mess with it.

  She wasn’t letting go of her soul around these country dykes either. Uh-uh. What was right for them was right for them, but she got to say what was right for her. Rattlesnake’s crowd scared her the way Sami had. She didn’t know why exactly, but she knew she had to keep her deflector shields up.

  “Cat!” called Donny with a slight thrust of her chin. “Want you to meet my buddy Jeep.”

  “Hey, girl,” said Cat, the smile in her eyes like a secret code.

  The babe was a little shorter than Jeep, about five feet, six inches, with trendy long blonde corkscrew hair. She wore a patchwork Mexican jacket, black jeans, and dusty Reeboks. Next to Cat was the small woman Cat had stopped to talk with earlier. Jeep recognized her now as the woman from the old-time music band, hair short on top, long in back, who’d rushed into Natural Woman Foods for luck the day Jeep hurt her foot. The toe still grumbled when she treated it roughly. Donny had driven her past Senorita’s later, but since then she’d been too busy and too broke to check out the women’s band.

  “This is Muriel,” Cat said, “our washtub bass player.”

  “You’re the violinist!” Muriel said, straight to the point. She was probably in her forties, with an East Coast accent and East Coast nervous energy. “We could use a fiddler.”

  Jeep checked out Cat’s grin. “Yes,” her eyes said, “Muriel’s pretty weird.” Jeep grinned back.

  “Can we hear you some time?” Muriel asked. She spoke in staccato notes. “Where are you living?”

  “I moved to Donny’s old trailer out at Wanderers’ Wayside this week.”

  “Sure. Sure. The trailer park? I know it. The tiny orange job out front?” Muriel turned to Donny. “Do you still own that? No? I’ll bet you keep track for these wanderers, though. I was going to see if it was vacant. For my nephew. I don’t want him up at Dawn Farm when he visits. You’ll keep an eye out for someplace else?” Muriel leaned close to Jeep. “Donny and Chick, they’re the lesbian Chamber of Commerce. Food, housing, rides to Greenhill. What’s next,” she asked Donny, “matchmaking? So, tomorrow, noon?”

  It took a moment for Jeep to stop avoiding Cat’s eyes after the matchmaking remark and to understand that Muriel was waiting for an answer.

  “I’m working. Five o’clock?”

  “What do you do?”

  Jeep rubbed her chafed hands, examined her dusty Doc Martens. There was nothing wrong with the work—she was glad to get it through Chick and Donny’s customer connections—but she found it hard to admit to. “I’m cleaning houses, raking leaves till I get something better.”

  “And you skateboard. I’ve seen you around town. You’re afraid you’ll fall and hurt your fingers of course. I would be too.”

  “No, I don’t do tricks. I just cruise.”

  “Okay,” proclaimed Muriel, either ignoring or not catching Jeep’s joke, “but we need to find you work that won’t hurt those hands.” She darted off toward someone’s hug.

  Donny and Cat were both looking at Jeep’s long fingers. Jeep, who secretly thought of them as a great asset in lovemaking as well as in music, slid them into her pockets. “So you’re in the band?”

  Cat pursed her lips and made some little sounds. “Mouth organ.”

  Jeep felt a shiver at the base of her spine. Was there anything not sexy about Cat? “Maybe we could play a duet some time.” She slid her harmonica out of her back pocket and brandished it.

  “Sounds like a plan, amigo,” Cat said.

  “It’s getting cold,” Donny said, leading them inside the raftered hall. “I wish the rain would start. This damp fog gets into my old bones.”

  Cat patted Donny’s short curls as they moved indoors. “You’ve got more pizzazz than half this gang. What are you, all of fifty-six? I remember your fifty-fifth birthday party. You in your new rainbow logging suspenders.” Cat stopped suddenly and Jeep, who’d been checking the hall out, collided with her.

  “Sorry.” She realized her hands had grabbed Cat’s shoulder and upper arm to keep from bending her bad toe. She let go quickly. “My bad foot,” she managed to say.

  “No, it was my fault,” Cat replied, smiling as if she’d read Jeep’s hasty release for the signals it denied. Cat eased them past the awkwardness when she asked, “What brings you to Waterfall?”

  Jeep had noticed that the locals shortened the town’s name. She wondered if she’d be there long enough to earn the right to do it too. “I met Solstice in the Bay Area. She said to come visit so I did.”

  “Solstice is one of the women on the mountain, isn’t she?”

  Jeep was a little surprised Cat didn’t know, but then a native might watch the traffic on women’s land with some skepticism, like any community with a lot of transients. Migrant farm workers, the homeless, hippie hitchhikers, hobos, and fruit tramps—the tradition stretched back to the Depression years when so many Americans were labeled this way. Here was a generation of women who’d pulled up stakes and, in their own way, taken part in a migration.

  “Uh-huh,” she answered Cat. “She spends time in the Bay Area too, temping for money to live up here. She calls it her city fix. I worked in a music shop. She used to spend hours in there looking through sheet music, admiring guitars. She never said she played in a band like yours.”

  “Who,” asked Cat with a smile that erased all her sophistication and made her look about twelve years old, “would admit to that?” Before Jeep could answer Cat said, “You like it here?”

  She gave Cat a purposely goofy grin. “It’s excellent. Lots of women.”

  “All fifty-seven flavors,” answered Cat, sounding like she’d savored close to that.

  Jeep stared at her.

  “A variety,” Cat explained.

  “I knew that,” Jeep replied, but she couldn’t look Cat in the eye. Of course Cat knew exactly what she’d been thinking.

  “But not as varied as my classes. I’m learning Spanish so I can talk to some of the kids.”

  Was Cat checking her out? And for what, a lover or a roommate? Was Cat where she went from here? Was her whole life going to be this honeybee d
ance from one flower to the next? The thought filled her with despair. She wanted—what was it she wanted? She saw herself, some day, sitting in the sun, in a backyard, a bunch of kids playing around her. She’d be tossing a football to one, shooing another into the house to practice. And later a family band with an auto harp, a banjo, all the old-timey instruments, like her family before her sister died. But she was a dyke, she never wanted to be pregnant, and she still wasn’t settled down at twenty-four. She hadn’t a clue how to get from here to that sunny there. She’d never even told Sarah about her vision. It was like one of those past-life regressions some of the women were into, but instead she saw her future.

  “Do you know what you’re walking into?” Cat asked. Jeep was startled by the question. It was kind of like Cat knew what she’d been thinking. “This community can be stranger than strange.”

  “Oh, that. That’s not news.” Jeep spotted Katie in the first row with R. She felt so angry so fast she wanted to yank out R’s fucking braid. She’d never seen them together before.

  Donny, who had been talking to an old woman with long white chin hairs, returned and led them deeper into the room. Following Jeep’s gaze, she put a comradely arm across her shoulders and said, “My buddy Jeep is getting her feet wet. R stole her girl.”

  “Kill,” Jeep was whispering over and over.

  “Down, girl. They’re not worth it. You’re going to find someone who loves you good.”

  Cat added, “If your ex wanted one of that crew, you don’t want her.”

  What would she have done back in Nevada if someone had stolen Sarah? The thought sent a pang through her. She was surprised how deep it went. Kind of like vibrations from bowing the G string real slow, only she was the string.

  R must have sensed Jeep in the back of the hall, because she rose and seemed to float toward her, pausing to bestow a press of hands here, a long hug there, long silver earrings flashing light, always gazing deeply into the other woman’s eyes.

  “Damn slick bitch,” Donny mumbled.

  Jeep had expected to feel all broken up the first time she saw Katie with her new lover, but she only got more steamed. What did she do wrong? What part of Katie had she totally missed seeing? They should have chanted together or some dumb ass thing? She never said squat about wanting to be a witch, if that’s what these women hiding out in the mountains were. “R’s pulling some magnanimous scene here, right? Thinks she’s the high priestess of Waterfall Falls?”

  “You got it,” whispered Cat.

  “Jeep!” said R in a tone that implied it was an amazing joy to find the light of her life right there in the flesh. “You don’t know how good it is to see you.”

  “So,” said Jeep. Making her voice loud and challenging over the crowd. “The Goddess of Spirit Ridge goes to the movies.” She sensed the three dozen women in the room chill. Well, she was a seasoned performer; she’d play R like a kettle drum and tighten her screws. She’d make her sing, and then mute her.

  “You must be a Hepburn fan too.”

  “Truth?” Jeep answered, glad she’d adopted Katie’s favorite expression. Let the bitch know she’d disrupted a whole history of love. “The lady weirds me out.”

  “How unusual.”

  R seemed to expect an explanation. Jeep, who’d been holding a fist full of the popcorn she’d grabbed from a passing bowl, carefully choose one kernel and bit it in half. She’d never encountered a person who would barge into a sticky situation like this. She guessed it was really, really important to R to make sure she confronted potential demons, even if it meant tromping on an insignificant heart she’d helped fracture. Maybe she was kind of like a politician, always looking for ways to make points. The woman could have approached her any time in private. She was looking for witnesses to her recital. Someone had way oversalted the popcorn.

  R smoothed a wool shawl that Sarah would have saved a year to buy and then considered too good to wear to the movies. Did R have big bucks? If she did, then why did she live practically like a street person? She was studying Jeep’s eyes, obviously looking for the note that would charm her. Cooler now, she said, “I hope you enjoy being with your sisters for the evening.”

  Jeep kept her eyes on R’s as she let disgust take over her voice. “You are sooo seventies.” Carefully, she put the other half of the kernel of corn in her mouth.

  She heard the outside door slam. Otherwise the room was almost silent.

  “Jeep, I’d be disappointed if we couldn’t have peace between us,” R said.

  Jeep stretched her mouth into a mockery of the smile R had been soliciting. Fire, she thought. Fire all phasers. “Maybe you should’ve thought of that first.”

  It was like watching an ice age arrive on fast forward. Jeep’s hands blazed with heat and her red alert flashed: Enemy Engaged. Proceed with Caution.

  “Can any of us control our paths, Jeep?”

  Yeah, I’d like to control yours, she thought. She’d never physically attacked anyone in her life, but if she had a light saber she’d do some damage about now. She pictured R’s hands, severed, dropping from her wrists and herself yelling, “You’ll never touch Sarah again!” Katie. She’d never touch Katie again. Why was she thinking of Sarah?

  At that moment Cat pushed a full bowl of popcorn into Jeep’s arms and, guiding her backwards as she pulled Donny along, said, “Fall in, girls. There’s Chick. We’ve got to grab seats. Excuse us, R!”

  Shaking, Jeep settled between Donny and Cat with Chick at the end of the row. She felt safely surrounded by rebel troops. Do not cry, she told herself. Do not fucking cry. Deep breath, she told herself and turned to Cat. “You were awesome.”

  Cat touched her arm. “You were amazing.”

  “Do not cry,” she said aloud, teeth gritted. A post blocked her view of the terrible twosome.

  “You pulverized that snake in the grass,” Donny said.

  Chick leaned across Donny. “What did you do to poor R? She’s the color of the blank screen.”

  “Not enough,” Jeep said for the second time that day. “Did I just make an archenemy? Do I need to find passage to another planet?” She’d never be able to call this place home if she left now.

  “Oh, Jeep,” Chick said with her loving smile. “R is my drumming friend, but she comes on too strong. You declared independence. Good for you.”

  “She’s right,” Donny agreed. “That was like the first day at school. You faced down the bully in the schoolyard.”

  “I did?” She saw that Donny and Chick were holding hands. She missed that, hokey as she’d always thought it.

  “You did,” Cat agreed softly. “I’m proud of you. For all she’s supposed to have done for the women’s community, someone’s needed to stand up to that woman for a long, long time.”

  “She’s so troubled,” Chick said. “What she needs is someone to hold her until she feels loved enough.”

  “For about ten years. In East Peoria,” said Donny, but Jeep was admiring Chick’s big heart.

  Chick looked sad, watching R stand and turn to the audience to introduce the film. “That would be a good start.”

  How did Chick manage to care about even R?

  The film was Little Women, circa 1933. Jeep had never known what people saw in that shrill-voiced Hepburn who always sounded on the edge of hysteria, and this copy was so scratchy, the women’s voices so strident, the action so crazed, that she wasn’t alone in her derision. First the audience squirmed, then giggled. The woman behind Jeep gave an alcohol-fragrant wolf whistle, and the laughter began.

  Jeep joined in quietly at first. She was the new kid and had been conspicuous enough tonight. She was so pissed at R that her heart had hardly been bruised from seeing the two of them together. She felt happy, damn it. How could that be? Friends, she realized. Chick and Donny had become her friends, and Cat—she might just be starting something with Cat too.

  Donny elbowed Jeep. It wasn’t R’s night. She’d risen to her full height, like a portentous m
oon, and now gave an insulted toss of her braid. With a regal stride, she left the hall. Quickly, head down, hands in the pockets of her leather jacket, Katie followed.

  That’s when the popcorn fight broke out. Jeep didn’t start it, but, when Cat let fly with one well-aimed kernel that got her on the chin, she let herself whoop with laughter, and flung handfuls at everyone between herself and the door.

  Chapter Seven

  The Rain Never Stopped

  The rain never stopped.

  R and Katie climbed in silence along a narrow path above Spirit Ridge. Katie’s TV news career had beamed her to a lot of places, none of them this deep into the natural world. She said, “I’ve never seen a place so consistent about raining while the sun’s out.”

  With her staff, R pointed in the direction of a double rainbow.

  “Awesome.” Katie squeezed R’s arm. She’d been watching her feet which still tripped or slipped on these wet trails if she didn’t pay close attention to where she was going. Sometimes she worried that she’d caught Jeep’s chronic imbalance, though Jeep’s falls seemed to go along with her passionate and sometimes off-putting enthusiasms. “This place is enchanted. It’s—” R pulled away and walked uphill.

  They went on through a dripping patch of evergreens, past madrone trunks losing their bark in camouflage patterns, under the naked live oaks and aspen.

  When they stopped again, Katie breathed deeply. “This is how the world should smell. All pine and earth, like an all-natural room deodorizer. And mushrooms? These are platters. Are they edible? Do people get high on them or am I thinking of the Southwestern kind?”

  “Kate. You’re chattering again.”

  She stifled a flash of annoyance. “Bummer,” she said as airily as she could. “I think aloud, don’t I?”

  No one had ever complained before, but then she’d never had such a silent lover. R couldn’t even tolerate Katie moving to the music on her headset. She’d tried playing Melissa Etheridge for R, but she’d covered her ears with her hands and looked more like Katie was stabbing her, than sharing an incredible song. R seemed to love her own thoughts more than—truth?—more than Katie.