Sweet Creek

by Lee Lynch

  “Encore!” Donny clapped when the sheriff finished. With a caw, a crow leapt from a rock to a low oak branch. She moved slightly upstream and noticed clover the size of quarters crowding around her feet.

  The sheriff whipped off her neon green Natural Woman Foods baseball cap and swept it before her in a bow. They smiled shy smiles at each other, and cast their lines out into the lively creek simultaneously. The forest erased its brief silence with chittering birds and grumbling frogs and the desperate bee.

  Donny had finally been getting comfortable with the sheriff, and now here was this whole new side of her. “You’re a Broadway musical nut?”

  The sheriff did a few soft-shoe steps on her rock. “There was such a shortage of male talent at Elk High I got some great roles. Picture me as Ezio Pinza.”

  “‘Some Enchanted Evening’?”

  “That was hot, but try ‘There is Nothin’ like a Dame.’”

  “You did that on stage? In front of—”

  “Every girl in the school.”

  “You must have had them lined up.”

  “All except Catching Rinehart.” Joan grinned a very unsheriff-like grin.

  “Say what?”

  “Cat.”

  The sheriff had never mentioned Cat before. Of course, she wasn’t spilling many beans now either. For all she gave away, the sheriff could be straight. Except Cat had already told Chick and her about the sheriff. They were the only ones in town who knew.

  “Catching? That’s Cat’s name?”

  “After her mother’s maiden name. Her ancestors on both sides settled this area for the whites.”

  “You mean took the land from your ancestors.”

  “I was pretty nasty to Cat in elementary school, even though I’m only half Indian.”

  “You’ve known each other that long?”

  The sheriff smiled.

  Donny felt proud that Joan was opening up to her and asked no more. She’d treat her like one of Chick’s volunteer plants in the tiny garden out back of the store. They were best left alone till harvest. Maybe she’d bring Chick some of those pussy willows she’d passed walking in. That and confidential dish of this quality ought to smooth things over.

  But the third time the sheriff messed up a cast, Donny wondered what was going on. Joan almost never fumbled casts. There was no smile now. A bullfrog under the ferns upriver sounded a damp gravelly warning. She slapped a bug.

  “New fly?” she asked. It made Donny nervous that the sheriff seemed nervous.

  The sheriff cleared her throat. “It’s my old Soft Hackle.” She showed the fly to Donny. “Maybe it’s time for a new one.”

  The whir of their reels and soft plunk of flies on the creek soothed her again. She thought she might take a little nap—let Joan catch dinner.

  Then the sheriff said, “Got something to run by you.”

  Donny felt a tug on her line, but lost it.

  “The name Abraham Clinkscales mean anything to you?” asked the sheriff in a startlingly different tone.

  Donny had heard her talk to people in trouble with that quiet, too-casual voice. She froze as still as the sheriff’s boulder. And now she heard it. The sheriff had called her by her full name earlier. No one even knew her full name except Chick. Was her voice going to shake? “Denise, my ex, was a Clinkscales.”

  “Any relation?”

  “She had a brother Abraham.”

  “Her brother was a dope dealer?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  The sheriff sounded like she was reading from a criminal record. “You shouldn’t. The Portland police were observing a dealer and pulled Clinkscales in during a raid. Apparently Clinkscales had already made his delivery because he was clean. Your name came up when they searched his record, and they called me. He claimed he wasn’t dealing, he was on his way to visit an old friend in Waterfall Falls.”

  I’m going to kick the shit out of that boy when I see him. He’s still up to his old tricks. “I haven’t seen Abraham in a thousand years,” she said too quickly.

  Goddamn, she thought she’d left that mess 2,000 miles and eight years back. She was too old to live with this fear in her gut. Why was the sheriff messing with her head? It was bad enough her body wanted to give out on her—her casting shoulder ached after only an hour and her damn back was sore from standing. She’d thank the sheriff to not treat her like a criminal. Wasn’t there a statute of limitations on this kind of bullshit?

  Joan didn’t say anything. Donny’s hook caught between rocks. The more she tugged, the tighter her line became.

  She’d only been Abe’s courier for a short while. What had she cared about his reputation in that dirty business? She’d kept back a little here and there, sold it, and kept the change. The worst weekend of her life, those two days she’d spent in jail. She wished she’d stayed out West with Chick and thought of her non-stop the whole time. It was a first offense for a very small amount and the courts were choked with bigger cases, the jails crowded with real criminals. The incident got her a record, but she never had to do the time. She quit then, figuring she had enough to go back to the tables. She’d won that second time. Won big.

  She tried stretching the line taut and springing it free. She’d never cared for drugs herself and hated what the hard stuff did to people, but this was blow for white college boys. They were going to get shit-face drunk if they didn’t have it, so what harm was there? The sheriff might not agree. She might think Donny was a two-faced hypocrite with a lot of nerve to be acting like a friend.

  Those boys were going to buy it somewhere, damn it. Donny had taken a temp job cooking at a little place popular with the college kids. One of the waiters, a student himself, had hinted around that he needed a source, and of course he came to the only black person working there. She’d only been trying to earn enough to come back out West to Chick. It had been so easy. Until the bust. Was she finally going to have to pay?

  She looked over. The sheriff was tinkering with her reel. Donny valued her friend’s good opinion. There was something about her that made you trust her to do the right thing, yet if the sheriff was so desperate to keep this town clean that she’d pick up any little speck of dirt, she’d fish alone.

  Her line waggled loose. Damn. She’d been so sure those weren’t white-girl eyes. She skimmed the filament across the water with a flick that should have parted her wrist from her forearm. Instead it sent an ache up to her shoulder so bad it made her half gag. A little cottontail dashed from a clump of huckleberries to a stand of thimbleberry. Loopy was downstream trying to catch water skimmers with her mouth, barking now and then in frustration.

  “Good cast!” the sheriff told her.

  “You know, Sheriff, these days, with this third-strike rule, people in trouble will give up their firstborn to save their backsides.”

  Sheriff Sweet took an undersized fish off her line and sailed it back into the creek, giving Donny a sideways glance. “I’m listening.”

  It was none of her damn business, but Donny offered, “Let me tell you a story.” She took in a deep breath. The lemon mint she’d crushed moving around on her patch of creek bank smelled so strong she tasted it. “I used to know a bulldagger who wanted real bad to start a new life in a new place with a new woman who’d nabbed her heart.”

  The sound of a song sparrow in the forest seemed so innocent next to the tale she was telling, the sheriff so unsullied and noble up there on her rock.

  “All the dagger did was try to win a gambling stake.” Donny heard the whining plea in her own voice. To make it worse, Chick’s dad had kept his family on the edge of poverty because of his gambling jones so she couldn’t cry on Chick’s shoulder. “She blew all her cash on the tables and crawled back to the city with nothing in her pockets but her big ideas. She thought she’d never be able to face the woman she loved or be part of her dream because it was important to the bulldagger to be able to pull her weight.”

  The sun had been full out for a
while now. The sheriff rolled up her cuffs. Donny was hot too, her shirt and overalls a wet mess at the small of her back, but she wasn’t going to show it. “So this dude asked her to help out with his—ah—small business operation. She never told a soul, even the new woman, that the money they used to set up their dream wasn’t only from gambling.”

  The sheriff was turning toward her.

  “The bulldagger wanted this one shot at a better life.” She pointed her rod at the sheriff. “If that woman was a solid citizen type in your town today, what would you do?”

  The sun was almost above them. If the fish hadn’t started biting by now, it was time to give in gracefully.

  Sheriff Sweet was looking at her, waiting, goddamnit. Donny couldn’t see inside those eyes that caught everything—birds, clouds, people, the creek, and the sunshine. They were like mirrors. She wished Chick were here to help her get out of this.

  Finally the sheriff answered. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, Donalds. Your friend, after all this time, might get off with community service. It would only be fair, since her friend the dealer was turned loose by the Portland PD.”

  Donny reeled in, waiting for the sheriff to drop the other shoe.

  “I need to deputize someone to run our DARE program,” the sheriff said.

  “Say what?” Donny hated these say-what days, when everything pounced out at her. What kind of friend was Joan? If she thought she could blackmail Donny into being a mouthpiece for that fool program she could shove it and shove what she knew. She cranked the handle with such violent jerks her fingers kept sliding off. Fuck you, she thought, and the horse you rode in on.

  The sheriff was smiling. Her eyes didn’t look mean. They looked like Chick’s when Donny pulled something really dumb, kind of laughing, kind of loving. The woman meant no harm, but what a jive turkey. Then she remembered what the sheriff had said earlier. She’d told her something about Cat. Neither Joan nor Cat had confided in anyone else about what they were to each other—she and Chick would have heard. The sheriff had been setting the stage, announcing that she trusted her.

  She began to laugh so loud the woods fell quiet again except for that bee. “Was that some kind of April Fool’s Day joke or is this how you get your volunteers?” she sputtered with shock and relief. She pulled off her jacket and wiped sweat with it. “I love you, Joan baby, I surely do love you. All you had to do was ask.”

  “I know,” answered the sheriff with her solemn face. “I know.”

  She wanted to ask questions as they packed their gear, Donny into her pickup, the sheriff onto Gal. Could the sheriff stand to be friends with a criminal on the loose? Would she tell Chick? Would she hold it over Donny’s head forever? She asked nothing; Joan, so typical, offered nothing. They picked the pussy willows for Chick and for Sheriff Sweet’s mother. Donny drove back to Chick’s arms as fast as her little truck would take her.

  Knowing that he was on the road, she wasn’t a bit surprised to get a call from none other than Abe Clinkscales a few days after fishing with Joan. The surprise, when it came, took a very different form. Abe announced his imminent arrival, leaving her barely enough time to get everything nice for him when he got there.

  She and Chick had been using the back room for storage. Jeep came by and helped her drag bags and boxes of stock and supplies out to the already crowded back end of the store. She expected this to be an extended stay and didn’t want Abe in their faces the whole time, so they carried the mattress and box spring down from the extra room upstairs. They set up a shelving unit from the produce crates she’d been saving. By the time she got to the bus stop she was exhausted—and excited. Sometimes it got lonely being the only black queer in the county.

  “Let me see you!” Donny had said, circling Abe at the bus stop. “You look gorgeous! What gives with traveling in drag, bro?” She wondered if the police were still keeping an eye on Abe and if he was trying to elude them.

  “I’m not a brother any more, Donalds.”

  “Say what?”

  Abe swirled. He wore tight black pants, ankle-high boots with gold chains, and a fuzzy purple jacket patterned with flowers. “This is no longer drag, girlfriend. You can call me Abeo!”

  “Abeo? Is that a name?” She didn’t know what to say. Abe had talked about changing gender a long time ago, but they hadn’t been in touch much since Donny moved west. “You didn’t tell me.”

  “Didn’t tell nobody nothing once I decided. Why do you think I left town? I need to be in the world as the new me. I don’t need postgame telling me I’m wrong.”

  “When did you do this? Did you get it done in Chicago? Nobody helped you? I can’t believe you went the whole way.”

  “Sweet pea, when did you ever know me not to finish what I started?”

  “That’s not something I’d know. I was never into boys, remember?”

  Donny’s friend was still broad-shouldered, very short, chunky, and loud.

  “Boy? Was I ever a boy? I’m me at last!” Abeo announced, flinging his—her—arms upward and twirling. “Did I tell you what Abeo means in Hausa? ‘Her birth brings happiness.’ My sister—you do remember good old Denise, your ex, don’t you? Denise told me that.”

  “Your family wasn’t Nigerian.”

  “You and your roots hang-up. What’s that got to do with it? Abraham wasn’t exactly a black African name when they called me after Abraham Lincoln.”

  “That bible dude he was named for was likely blacker than me.”

  “Martha Stewart’s practically blacker than you.”

  “But I’ve still got better hair than she does.”

  They grinned at each other in the white light of the street lamp, the bus still dieseling beside them. The night was mild and moist with a still fog that hadn’t broken into rain.

  Donny tried to get back her big anger about Abeo ratting her out up in Portland. “Why didn’t you call from Portland to say you were coming?”

  “Portland? I left Portland last week. I had a little business matter to take care of in Seattle.”

  “So you made a delivery as Abe, then changed into your girl clothes and got on the Green Tortoise because no one would think to look for you on a hippie bus.”

  “I don’t do courier work, man. I told you I got out of that business a long time ago.”

  “And you think they won’t think to look for you here either. Shit, I’ll bet you’re running from the cops and the goddamned dealers.”

  Even as Abraham, Abeo had always batted his eyelashes to good effect. This time she played it haughty. “I’m getting back on that Tortoise. You don’t need to know my business.”

  “Hasta la vista, then. I don’t want anything to do with hiding a fugitive.”

  Abeo shrugged and wouldn’t meet her eyes when she said, “I was clean. They didn’t have any grounds for arrest, but I could tell they’d think some up if I didn’t name some names—or disappear.”

  “You’re saying you didn’t name names?”

  “I didn’t give them anything they could use, Don. Scout’s honor.”

  “What kind of scout do you think I’m going to believe you are?”

  Abeo danced back a bit and let out a peal of laughter loud enough to carry the length of Stage Street. “Do you remember? You joined that Girl Scout troop so I had to join the boys? And they threw me out when they caught me with that Eagle Scout?”

  “Abe, I mean it. I’m not rescuing you this time.”

  Abeo fastened herself to Donny’s sleeve. “Did I tell you? I ran into Mr. Eagle Scout in the Castro last year? Only the uniform was different?”

  “I don’t believe a word you’re saying, child, so let go of my arm. My woman’s going to wonder where I’m at.”

  “Donny, you’re the only one I’ve got to take care of me. I want to grow into my new body where no one’s watching.”

  It wasn’t the first time Abe had pulled a stunt like this, and Donny was sure it wouldn’t be the last. She’d always taken
him—her—in. Abe—Abeo—knew her weak spots better than anyone.

  The Green Tortoise driver had finally located Abeo’s two suitcases and the bus strained away, a knot of riders waving through the windows.

  “You going to miss me, girlfriends?” Abeo shouted.

  “Terminally!” came a voice from the noisily accelerating bus.

  When it was gone, Donny felt naked, alone in downtown white America in the now-drizzling dark with her once protégé and best gayboy buddy, Abraham, in his new post-op persona.

  To make it worse, Sheriff Sweet walked out of a bar the next block up. The sheriff’s eyes checked them out, and she gave a little wave as she mounted her horse. Donny had a feeling Joan would see through Abe’s disguise pretty quickly.

  “What are you staring at, Donalds?” asked Abeo. “You don’t like looking at this pretty woman?”

  “I was worried I’d have the jimjams if you ever changed, but you haven’t changed at all.”

  “Now, now, Miss Thang, certain things are different.” Abeo looked down Waterfall Falls’ deserted main street and seemed to shiver. “Is this a safe place for you, Don?”

  She felt warm around the heart from Abeo’s concern. She’d been a long time without a black friend. She was too city for the local blacks. “It’s not safe,” she told Abeo, “to be black in the United States of America. I’m an extra-large target here because I take on the voting booth queer-bashers. Did you follow the shit they pulled with their initiatives? I wanted to file a class action suit and sue their asses for making us waste our lives to keep the ground we’ve got.”

  “I’ve been otherwise occupied,” said Abeo. “As you may have noticed.”

  “Don’t tell me you stopped voting when I left.”

  “What difference would my little old vote make?”

  “Get with it, Abe. Safe doesn’t just happen. You have to force it down their breeder throats.”