Angela Sloan

by James Whorton

  “Fighting pigs is no big deal. I haven’t used a toothbrush in several days, so my breath could probably knock a pig over.”

  “Some of us are ready to get beat up or even die for the revolution,” Wilhelmina said. “What do you think about that?”

  “I’m in no hurry to die,” I said.

  Dirk gave a laugh—not even a laugh, really, but a dry blast of air from his nose. For him, apparently, dying was just a normal day at the office.

  “I don’t mind mixing it up,” I said. I lifted my hair to show them the mark where I had run into the shovel on the front-end loader. I told them a night watchman had done it to me outside a Bank of America depository. “Ding took him out with a pipe,” I said. “Then she dragged me up the alley to a candy shop.”

  Dirk gazed at the scabbed-over gash on my forehead with a simple, greedy awe. Both of them did. They were made stupid by it.

  “I’m telling her about the action,” Wilhelmina said to Dirk.

  “If you tell her, she’s got to become involved,” Dirk said.

  “Are you in?” she asked me.

  “In what?” I said.

  “In the action.”

  “I don’t know what the action is.”

  “We can’t tell you what the action is until you promise you’re in.”

  “I’m going to have a problem with that,” I said.

  “I know you’re not afraid,” Wilhelmina said. “Do you hate the world as it is?”

  “Sure I do.”

  “Then let’s make war.”

  “I’m getting everyone in the van right now,” Dirk said. “Bring the box.” He left.

  Wilhelmina gathered a few tools from the floor—a hand drill, some pliers—and set them in an Army surplus footlocker. I saw packs of flashlight batteries in there, too, along with some bundles wrapped in newspaper. Wilhelmina shut the lid and snapped a padlock.

  “Grab an end, sister.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the van.”

  The footlocker was heavy, and when I stumbled once, Wilhelmina stopped and laid a hand on her chest. “Don’t drop it,” she said.

  The rear doors of the van stood open. We set the locker in back, behind the daybed, and covered it with some dirty canvas and a green pillowcase.

  “What’s that?” Renee said from on top of the bed.

  “Supplies,” Wilhelmina said. She climbed up to join Renee.

  The engine cranked and caught. I walked around to the open sliding door. Eeyore was already at the wheel, with Dirk in the front passenger seat.

  “Come on, sister!” Wilhelmina called.

  “I haven’t had breakfast yet,” I said.

  “I saved you some Spam,” Renee said.

  “Where is Ding?”

  But there she was right in front of me, alone on the fan-backed wicker garden chair. “If I come, you come,” Ding said.

  I got in.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Washington, D.C.!” Renee said.

  73

  We exited North Carolina by the Blue Ridge Parkway, which runs along the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Betty asked for gum, but there is no place to get gum on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

  “The park pigs police the parkway,” Dirk said.

  “I haven’t seen any pigs,” Renee said.

  There wasn’t much of anything to see—no billboards allowed on the parkway, and no Stuckey’s restaurants. It was a national park in the form of a well-maintained highway. Aside from the pavement itself, the only evidence of mankind’s dominion was the occasional brown speed limit sign.

  Betty looked like she might cry or kill someone. I advised her to try to sleep.

  The morning was long, tense, and dull. Wilhelmina explained to Renee that the park pigs were some of the basest pigs in the government, because it was their job to underestimate the size of the movement. “When a million kids stormed the Pentagon, the Park Service said there were only a hundred thousand of us.”

  Dirk explained to Eeyore why monogamy must be smashed. “After the revolution there will be no private property.”

  Betty’s garden chair had one bad leg, which eventually broke off. Down she went. Wilhelmina laughed—not a pretty sound. Betty got to her feet and, very practically I thought, smashed the chair against the steel floor until the other three legs were also broken off. She then had the benefit of the comfortable wicker seat and the large, fan-shaped backrest while stretching her legs out in front of her, crossed at the ankles.

  I got by with a dirty red pillow, fringed in gold at the seams.

  Dirk proposed we all take our clothes off and entwine our bodies on the floor of the van.

  “No,” said Wilhelmina, Betty, Renee, Eeyore, and I.

  His next idea was that we get off the Blue Ridge Parkway and find some gum for Ding.

  “All right,” Eeyore said.

  We left the parkway and stopped at a Gulf station. Dirk seemed to know the attendant. They hugged and shared an elaborate handshake. When we were in the van and moving again, Dirk passed around a sack of green, apple-flavored bubble gum. Mine had a little stamp inside the wrapper, like an S&H green stamp, only smaller. We all had these stamps, except for Eeyore, who was driving.

  “What are these little stamps?” Renee said.

  “Lay it on your tongue. Like this,” Dirk said.

  She did it, and so did Wilhelmina. Now they watched Betty and me.

  “It builds cadre spirit,” Wilhelmina said.

  “And proves you’re not a pig,” Dirk said.

  I put the little stamp on my tongue as Dirk and Wilhelmina watched. Betty did the same.

  Renee described an experience she’d had while camping with the youth group from her church. A bunch of them were holding plastic forks over the fire, causing the tines to curl. Then she put a Styrofoam cup on a stick, and a drop of molten Styrofoam landed on her fingertip. She showed us the scarred cuticle.

  “Still, you have a handsome set of paws,” Wilhelmina said.

  All of us examined Renee’s hands. The fingers were long, though not too long, and the skin had a wholesome, healthy, elastic appearance. The bluish veins branched and cornered like U.S. routes on a map.

  “My old paws are awfully scaly,” Wilhelmina said.

  “Mm, yes,” Renee said. She examined them clumsily, front and back.

  “Maybe you can put some lotion on those hands,” Betty said.

  We took turns scrutinizing Betty’s hands. They were as hard as wooden spoons.

  Eeyore had the handsomest set of hands aboard. The same quality that was so unappealing in his feet, namely their expressiveness, was a virtue in his hands. He didn’t carry much meat on his bones, but Eeyore’s skeleton was substantial. He had big knuckles, too.

  “Eeyore’s hands make me sad,” Renee said. She began to cry.

  Dirk’s hands were like possum hands. Pink, with wrinkled knuckles and pale, horny nails. His hands seemed made for reaching and scratching up under things, like up under dashboards, sofas, or pant legs.

  “Don’t cry,” Eeyore said.

  I was well aware that I had ingested some kind of narcotic substance with that paper stamp. I’d considered it necessary to establish good faith with these dangerous hooligans. I waited for my mind to be blown. Yet nothing much happened to me.

  Renee was up front in the passenger seat holding hands with Eeyore, who still drove. Dirk had taken his clothes off and was loping in an ape-like posture in the back of the van while Wilhelmina twitched on the daybed.

  I began to suspect that I had some kind of natural resistance to whatever was in the stamp.

  Betty sat quietly. On the floor next to her was an animal about the size of a large tomcat. Its body and tail were covered with leathery gray scales. A pangolin. I hadn’t seen one of those in a long time.

  I asked Betty, “How do you feel?”

  “I feel different,” she said.

  “I don’t.”


  “Everything feel so soft.”

  “How did that pangolin get in here?”

  “I don’t know what a pangolin is.”

  “Look, it’s right there.”

  “Don’t see it.”

  The pangolin stood, lifting its front legs off the floor. It was difficult to tell for sure in which direction it was looking. Its eyes were positioned on the sides of its head, like a horse’s eyes. There was a nonspecific vigilance about the creature: the wariness of the grazer. The eater of insects.

  “When I was a small girl,” I said, “some boys brought a live pangolin to the house for us to eat. Judith gave them some money for it, but then she wouldn’t cook it. She said we must never eat a pangolin. Judith was a Congolese lady. She put the dogs in the shed, and then she put the pangolin on the ground. It stood up and walked into the bush.”

  Betty wasn’t listening. She was singing in her high, quavering Chinese singing voice.

  Dirk was urging all of us to take all our clothes off and criticize Wilhelmina. I don’t know what road we were on. We rolled through towns. Renee had a hand on the top button of her shirt, but she was not quite fully persuaded yet. Eeyore kept an eye on her over his shoulder as he drove. I noticed lots of flags out. I didn’t think anything of it. I had forgotten what day it was.

  “Go ahead and criticize me,” Wilhelmina said. “Pelt me with doctrine.”

  From outside the van there came a noise like artillery.

  Behind us in the road, six or seven ranks of girls in white tights and spangled blue leotards were marching in close formation. They carried bright rifles. They all wore snowy eye makeup, too.

  Wilhelmina began to scream.

  A line of cymbals flashed in the sun, and a band blasted out the “Marines’ Hymn.” It’s a stirring tune, even if, like me, you’re not sure what the halls of Montezuma are. The girls pitched their rifles over their heads, and the rifles hung spinning until the girls snatched them down.

  “I do believe we are inside of a Fourth of July parade,” Dirk said.

  Wilhelmina squealed and wriggled, and the rest of us kept falling over whenever Eeyore tapped the brakes to keep from hitting some men who were driving little red cars. The men had fezzes on their heads. The sidewalks were bunched with people. In some cases, the small people straddled the necks of the large ones.

  A couple of horses came alongside the van with policemen on their backs. Dirk began to look for his clothes.

  “You threw your clothes out the window,” Eeyore said.

  Dirk pulled at Wilhelmina’s shirt. She slapped his hands away.

  Renee waved her lithe arms from the window, and some of the people waved back at her.

  I was holding the pangolin in my lap through all of this, hidden underneath my hands. It had a way of rolling its body into a ball.

  Eeyore got us out of the parade and found a place to park. In the back of the van he went from person to person, settling people down. Wilhelmina clenched her eyes, then woke up ready to lead the study group. “Let’s all clean our buckets out!” she said.

  Dirk was first. “Sometimes I can’t concentrate because of my horniness,” he said.

  “Before I was in love with Eeyore,” Renee said, “I was in love with someone else.”

  “I feel guilty for not going to Vietnam,” Eeyore said.

  Betty spoke some language while rolling her eyes, and then she punched her thigh.

  “What is it?”

  “I am speak Chinese with American accent,” she said. She laughed and laughed.

  “I once had a friendly uncle,” Wilhelmina said.

  “That’s nice,” Renee said.

  “No, it isn’t.”

  This went on for an hour or more. A lot of buckets got emptied in the van.

  “Go on and clean your bucket with us, Lucy,” Wilhelmina said.

  “My bucket is already clean.”

  “If so, you are a marvel.”

  “Let’s have a corn dog,” I said.

  We got out of the van and walked to where the corn dog stand was. The parade was long over, and I don’t know why the stand was still open. The man was dipping corn dogs to order. They came hissing from the grease. “Corn dog is good!” Betty said. She paid for everyone.

  While the others were distracted, I slipped off behind a pile of tires and set the pangolin on the ground. It unballed itself and climbed into a trash can. Perhaps the kind of food it liked was there.

  The others were waiting for me in the van. I got in and we left.

  It was evening when we crossed the Potomac. Traffic was slow, and Eeyore got lost. He had gotten us there alive, though. We climbed out into a thick flock of longhairs at Dupont Circle. It was raining. Dirk had on some overalls of Wilhelmina’s; I saw his naked gray heels flash, and he disappeared into the crowd. Wilhelmina sank into a heap. Eeyore clung to Renee, and she petted him constantly. I heard her say into his ear, “I would never do that.”

  Eeyore paid some quarters so we could go under a tarp and see a thing called “The Dave Wilson Millipede Circus.” In fact Dave Wilson’s millipedes didn’t do much but crawl over some miniature playground equipment while Dave Wilson blew songs on a harmonica. When one of the millipedes fell an inch it would coil up and be still awhile.

  “It’s a traveling millipede circus,” Dave Wilson explained to Renee. “When I get enough quarters, I’m going to Kentucky.”

  “Anywhere sounds better than here,” Eeyore said.

  I lost Betty and then I found her again under a tree, eating peanuts from a bag.

  We watched fireworks, and then we fell asleep.

  Before dawn, someone waked Betty and me up and asked us if we wanted a bath. Of course we did. Ten or a dozen of us got into Dirk’s van. Dirk and Wilhelmina were there. Eeyore and Renee had left, I guess. Maybe they went with Dave Wilson to Kentucky. I never did see them again.

  The van stopped near the Capitol, and we walked west along the lit-up Mall. There’d been an awfully big party there the day before. The grass was chewed up and littered with trash. A few stragglers lay under blankets, or under each other. The Smithsonian Castle shone black with glitter points. We sauntered, soaking wet, some of us pausing to howl or scratch. It had rained all night, and it was raining now.

  Betty touched my arm. “Where are we?”

  I told her where we were.

  “Something strange has happened,” she said. “No more apple-flavor gum.”

  The two of us found a bench. Ahead of us, at the Reflecting Pool, the men and women we’d come here with were stripping off their clothes. Their figures were small and pale, the voices mild and faraway-sounding. So this was where we were to bathe. A tall fellow waded in circles in the fountain, gathering pennies into a sock.

  “D.C. has a big Chinatown,” Betty said. “I think I will go there.”

  “What about Wang? You said that he could find you in any Chinatown.”

  “I know how to deal with those people. I don’t want to stay with these hippies anymore.”

  We sat awhile.

  The sky over the Capitol turned pink. On the sidewalk I noticed some worms—many worms. Hundreds of them. The big ones were long and doughy, the small ones little more than pencil strokes. They were everywhere. At a puddle in the sidewalk a huge clot of them had massed up like a pound of fresh hamburger, striving together.

  I asked Betty, “Do you see these worms?”

  She got down on her haunches like a baseball catcher and cupped a worm in her hands. Her hands were pale inside. The worm flipped as though trying to right itself.

  “I do see worms,” Betty said.

  We were studying the flipping worm when we heard screams. I wasn’t too alarmed, by now. It was only some Girl Scouts, up early and hysterical. Three of them shared two umbrellas, hopping on the sidewalk, squealing and laughing, splashing in their saddle shoes. They saw the worms, too. It was an ordinary, real, post-rain earthworm rising.

  Betty laid her worm on the grass. �
��Goodbye worm,” she said.

  It was at this point that I advised Betty of the truth, that I had held certain things back from her regarding my identity and associations, etc. I did not tell her what my associations were. There was simply a desire to clear the air. “I have lied to you a good deal,” I said.

  “I know that already.”

  In spite of trying not to, I began to cry. “I oppose your ideology,” I said, “but I wish your Chinese people well.” I told her how to get to Chinatown.

  “Goodbye,” she said, and she walked off the way I had told her to go, back up the Mall and past the Museum of Natural History. Beyond that she would go north until she came to H Street, where she would turn right and just keep going until she found herself surrounded by signs with Chinese writing on them. That was the last I saw of Betty.

  74

  The sixth of July was a Thursday. The streets had been washed, and the sky was mostly empty. In the van Wilhelmina read aloud to us about the night the Bolsheviks killed Czar Nicholas and his heirs in a basement, bunching them up as though for a family portrait, then cutting them down with guns and bayonets.

  We all had new clothes on, or new old clothes, from the Salvation Army store. Wilhelmina had chosen a tailored skirt and jacket made of coarse, knobbly orange and magenta stuff. She’d found some pumps that nearly went with the suit, and up top she had on a cloche hat that covered her ears. Her calves were nicked and bloody from a public restroom shaving.

  Dirk was in dark blue business attire. The suit had an off smell but looked all right.

  I had on cowboy boots and a blue DuPont raincoat.

  The bomb was in pieces in our clothes. Our plan was to enter the Department of the Interior building one at a time. Each of us would take the elevator to a different floor, then we’d meet in a back stairwell. Dirk would leave the assembled bomb in a men’s-room stall near the offices of the National Park Service.

  In the van Wilhelmina stopped reading and closed her book. The czar had gone quickly, but some of the family had lingered through long stabbings. Wilhelmina’s cheeks were wet. Dirk asked her why she was crying.

  “Because I’m so happy,” she said.