and Snickers appeared to have no history, regional accents, political opinions, food preferences, sexual orientations, and so on. In truck stops, diversity is mostly in one’s imagination and Eldon wasn’t strong in that area. So this bunch of his fellow Americans chained to a gate and chanting incomprehensible slogans struck him as weird.
He whispered to Sheriff Taylor, “Look at that guy over there. He has those dreadlocks you see on TV. Can we cut his hair when we get him to the jail?” Sheriff Taylor frowned at him and turned away. Eldon didn’t suggest it to be cruel, he was just curious.
On the way back to the Boon County jail, the vans became mired in mud twice and sand once. A recent thunderstorm left soupy washes in its wake and while crossing one of them the van borrowed from the senior civic center slogged to a halt and stopped. It wasn’t designed to navigate four-wheel-drive roads and the clearance was too low. The prisoners were ushered out of the van and stood on an adjacent bank watching Taylor and his deputies try to rock and push the van through a fresh bed of sucking silt and clay.
The sheriff and his deputies slipped and swore, grunted, flailed, pushed harder and failed again and again. The arrested protestors watched the show for several minutes and then looked at each other, shrugged, and left their dry perch above the wash to join in and push the van free. Eldon reached for the handle of his revolver but they waded into the mud with such good cheer that he was confused. They pushed together with all their might and the deputies found themselves sorting out a confounding mix of suspicion, surprise, and appreciation. The van broke free and climbed the embankment, a cheer went up, and the prisoners climbed back into the van without being ordered to do so, carefully scraping mud off their shoes and boots first.
After that, the prisoners conversed freely and asked questions. They learned that the wife of one deputy was expecting a baby girl any day now and that Eldon Pratt recently won a trophy at the county fair for roping steers. The deputies learned that their prisoners included a retired professor, a garlic farmer, a concert violinist, a microbiologist, a computer programmer, an electrician, a nurse, and Luna, who described herself as a “budding rainbowologist.” By the time they were delivered to the county jail, Eldon’s confusion was complete. As the prisoners were escorted to the jailhouse door, he stammered, “Good luck,” then blushed and fell silent. He hoped the other deputies didn’t hear that.
The county jail was not designed for more than a handful of occupants. It was mostly a holding pen until the accused could be transported to a larger facility fifty miles away. Sheriff Taylor apologized for the crowded conditions. He and his men had never witnessed a protest or arrested so many people at once. They once busted four people when a fight broke out at the county fair during the demolition derby but that was the previous record.
Police work in Boon County consisted of ticketing speeding motorists, issuing DUIs, settling domestic disputes, rescuing stranded hikers, and rounding up horses that got loose and ventured too close to roads. The accidents they responded to were few and far between but tended to be gruesome given the high speeds that desert drivers are accustomed to, the unforgiving landscape of rocks and ravines, and the too frequent presence of deer, elk, and cows in the middle of roads at night. The previous week Ula May Bostick superglued her husband Frank to the toilet seat and beat him with a broom handle for having an affair with Myra Gundy. That was about as exciting as it got in Boon County. Compared to that, the tar sands protest was epic.
The morning after the protest, Gif Hanford called Orin Bender. Gif was the foreman on site. He’d been out of work for months after a shoulder injury and looked forward to a long, secure, and lucrative run as a field manager with Drexxel’s tar sands project. The prospect of losing that because a bunch of loonies with dreadlocks and backpacks got in the way was alarming. His sister’s kid had cancer and he was helping her pay medical bills. There was credit card debt and he owed child support. He had too much at stake to let a bunch of damn freaks stop work. He knew that the suits who ran Drexxel avoided embarrassing confrontations with the public and would try to PR their way around any ensuing controversy. No, Gif thought, this calls for someone who knows how to play hardball. Orin could do that as well as anyone Gif knew.
Meanwhile, the thirteen ardent members of the Seafold Ledges Tar Sands Alliance were whiling away in the Boon County jail. They were crowded together in a single holding cell while Sheriff Taylor figured out what to do with them. He called and consulted with the county attorney, Lawton Hatch, and argued that keeping them cost money he hadn’t budgeted for and there were not enough cells to handle them according to state standards.
To make room for the new inmates, he considered releasing Ike Mooney, who was arrested the day before. Ike was a driver for the state fish and game workers who were poisoning and draining Circle Bluff Reservoir to scour out invasive populations of zebra mussels and bass. Ike was supposed to haul a load of dead fish to the landfill but stopped at a tavern in Junction and got soused instead. He ended up at the home of his ex-wife’s boyfriend, Cecil Barney, who arrived home later to discover a truckload of stinking fish piled up against his garage door. The sheriff felt it would be best to keep Ike until he was completely sober and give Cecil time to calm down. He could release the woman they called Meth Head Mona but she’d only be back tomorrow.
Lawton Hatch interrupted him. He was adamantly opposed to an easy release. “These are the same damn people who shove every federal law protecting endangered species down our throats and keep us from getting jobs and getting rich by tying up oil and gas so we can’t get to it. I intend to make an example of them, not coddle them!”
So the prisoners stayed while the lawyer who volunteered to represent them bargained over charges and bail with Lawton Hatch. Luna Waxwing had three days to reflect on the events that put her into an orange jumpsuit several sizes too large and landed her next to a cellmate named Mona who had lost her teeth to meth. Mona was caught shoplifting cigarettes, her tenth offense. Luna had lots of time to converse with Mona and the others in the lock-up who were not there for protesting the strip-mining of the Seafold Ledges. She wanted to hear their stories. On day three she had a revelation.
“I get it!” she told Mona. “Addiction, alcoholism, self-sabotage, laziness, rage—they’re not just bad behaviors but ways we withhold our participation from a world that makes no sense, that cannot sustain us psychologically or spiritually.”
Mona cackled, coughed, then reached down into her jumpsuit to scratch her crotch. “You sure is funny, girl!”
Mona notwithstanding, Luna thought she was onto something. She herself had succumbed to drugs, failed, and raged because she just couldn’t belong to the program that her teachers and counselors, her mom, and her peers handed her. Why accept a way of life that is coldly competitive, even predatory? Why is it so important to own things, to have more, always more? Are the so-called successful happy?
In her teens, she looked around and saw judgmental hypocrites in charge at every turn. Greedy pigs wrote the rules. And the rules were imposed in an ass-backward way that offended her. Pink hair was criticized but it was okay to flaunt a diamond that was mined by workers who were essentially slaves. You were mocked for being a vegan but it was okay to eat calves that were trapped in huts and overdosed on milk so their flesh was pale and tender. People give their dogs Christmas presents and then eat ham from a pig that is every bit as intelligent and sensitive as their pets. Stealing millions from widows was punished lightly if you wore a fine suit and silk tie but rob beer from a liquor store and you could be killed, especially if you were born black or brown or red. It was all so transparently bogus and contrived to her but nobody else agreed. Lose the attitude, they told her. Liz, don’t be such a downer. Grow up!
Her search for a North Star to guide her took her to church where, again, the contradictions were ripe. Killing a fetus the size of a thumb that had no relationship beyond its host was a sin but it was okay to bomb cities full of whole people with parents, siblings, neighbors, and co-workers. Masturbation was a sin but the addictive consumption of wasteful bling
