Benjamin Robert "Bob God" Taylor
P.O.B.2986
Chino Valley,
AZ.86323
(back to top)
Any resemblance between the characters in this story and real life are purely autobiographical. The names and locations have been changed to avoid prosecution ...and to sell the story.
1. Poison Ivy
2. Rosie's Barandgrill
3. Sheriff Bob
4. Ranger Molly
5. Hippie Hollow
6. Seizing Control
7. The Yuppies from Town
8. Political Poison
His name was Will. Not William, just plain Will; Will McGill, with no middle initial. As if that wasn't bad enough, he was the fourth firstborn son in a row to bear that name. His Grandfather had been the lucky one, he was called "Junior" til the day he died. Every other Will McGill to bear the name had been the butt of cruel rhymes from cradle to grave. Fortunately for Will McGill IV, most of the people who knew him, all the way back through grade school, called him Ivy, for the Roman numeral that punctuated the end of his name like a spastic checkmark. Those that knew him really well called him Poison Ivy, or sometimes just Poison, for the way he controlled his temper but always found a way to get even with those who dared to torment or oppress him.
Ivy sat on a hill not far from Interstate 40 with a Radio Shack model TR-250 citizen's band walkie talkie tuned to channel nineteen and chatted with the truckers passing by. The antique backpack he sat on had belonged to his dearly departed Daddy, who had succumbed to a massive myocardial infarction only a week earlier, at the ripe old age of forty-seven. The old but well maintained backpack was divided into four compartments that contained all the rest of Ivy's inheritance from Will McGill III.
His mother had given him the old Gerry Wanderer, an obsolete frame-style backpack, and all of its contents almost immediately after his father's funeral. She had pretty much told him to hit the road, adding that he should write often and that she would miss him. Yeah, right.
A cursory inspection reassured him that the top compartment of the pack still contained a complete medical kit, including a full set of surgical instruments and suture material. It had once included sulfa and half a dozen morphine ampules with expiration dates of 1975, which he had prudently discarded to avoid any potential problems with the law.
Toking on a fat spliff, he continued his inventory to confirm that a cotton web belt was where he had placed it behind a dirty bandanna filled with dried, bloody boogers. To the belt were attached an old, well oiled Colt Combat Commander in pristine condition and four magazines of .45 automatic caliber ammo that were all left over from his father's stint as medic in Viet Nam. Daddy had always refused to talk about that war, but Ivy knew that he had been a medic.
The second and third compartments from the top of the backpack had been empty when his Mom gave the pack to him but now contained Ivy's own meager possessions; a few cans of Spam and Campbell's tomato soup,three pair of levi 501's, half a dozen tee shirts, several pair of socks, a Carhart barn jacket, a fat hardback book; Yoshikwa's biography of Musashi and an army surplus mess kit filled with utensils, matchbooks, rolling papers and condiments, . The bottom compartment of the pack bulged with an ancient U.S. Army mummy-style sleeping bag.
The walkie talkie crackled to life as a trucker summoned him from his mental list-making duties. "Breaker, breaker, one-nine... I'm a lookin' for that electronic hitch-hiker, come back"
"Uh, ten-four, mister trucker dude, you got the walkin' talkie, come on back..."
"Got the word from an eastbound that you're headed to Californie, boy. I'm onna run to Amarillo and can take you that far if it'll help."
A moment of pregnant silence followed in which Ivy expected the trucker to add some condition to the offer. When none came, he responded, "Abb-so-tively! Affirmatory; ten-four! That's more'n half way! I'm at mile marker two-eight oh, that's two eighty westbound, come back?"
Instead of a radio reply, Ivy saw the truck clear the top of the next hill to the east and begin the tedious task of braking to a halt. He shouldered his pack and jogged down the hill to the ribbon of concrete that lay across the pristine landscape like a hideous scar.
Ivy could hardly believe his eyes as he saw the truck door swing open. Painted on the truck was the name of the owner/operator, one Will Jones.
"High!" Ivy greeted his namesake, "is your name really Will, or is that just short for William?" he queried as he arranged his pack between his feet.
"Just plain old Will and plain old Jones." the exceptionally large and coal-black trucker grinned from around what was left of a well chewed but unlit cigar, offering a hand that made Ivy's own look like the paw of a newborn kitten.
"My name's Will, too!" Ivy volunteered, "Will McGill the fourth. That's fourth in Roman numerals; eye, vee... Uh, my friends call me Ivy."
"Pleased to meetcha, Mister Ivy. Seems like we gotta lot in common. You smell like skunk. Got any rolled up?"
Hundreds of miles passed beneath the two Wills as the cab of the eighteen wheeler filled with the sweet smell of Kentucky blue. Ripped to the tits, Ivy marvelled at the beauty of the Arkansas wilderness, drifted off to sleep, then awoke somewhere that the black giant described as "Canadian Texas."
Over a joint made entirely of roaches from the trucker's ash tray, Ivy learned that Canadian Texas was really Baja Oklahoma, panhandle country, and that they would soon be reaching Amarillo and the end of the trail.
It took Will Jones less than twenty minutes on the C.B. radio to secure another ride for Ivy with a fellow trucker. The Right Reverend Red Dog One, which sounded ominously like more than a C.B. handle, would take him as far as Las Vegas, but he was warned not to so much as mention the wicked weed or the fact that Mr. Jones indulged in it, since the reverend was a tea-totalling Bible thumper who would rather rat out a fellow trucker than risk his mortal soul by failing to do so.
"But," the very stoned black man added, "He's good people anyhow."
Although not anywhere near as much fun as his previous host, Ivy found the reverend to be somewhat tolerable company. He even found himself saying "amen" and nodding in simulated agreement to parts of the nonstop sermon that was nearly as entertaining as the endless row of telephone poles that marched alongside the interstate.
The subjects of the reverend's sermons ranged from how sorry them Jews is gonna be when the lord Jesus comes back to how you can tell that them niggers is diff'ernt from 'regular' folks 'cause even after just riding inna truck with one, Ivy smelled just like one of 'em. He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from explaining that the smell of skunk weed was his own choice and his own doing and that Mister Jones had set a far more Christ-like example than the reverend could ever live up to without so much as mentioning any religious subjects at all.
Somewhere west of Flagstaff, enough got to be more than enough, and when the darkness ahead was punctuated by a small cluster of lights, Ivy asked to be let out.
"I'll be fine," he explained, "I have a walkie talkie to get a ride with and really need to grab a bite to eat."
It wasn't until the reverend's tail lights were disappearing in the distance that Ivy realized that they had left the main interstate and that he was stranded somewhere on an unnamed two lane blacktop back road.
Grateful for the silence after Reverend Red Dog's non-stop sermon and high, thin, whiny voice, Ivy took his bearings. There were three wood framed buildings on the north side of the highway, where he stood with his backpack at his feet, and a squat, square stone building all alone on the south side. The sign on the stone building sent shivers up and down his spine; "Sheriff, Judge, Public Defender, Courthouse, Jail." He decided to remain on the north side of the road.
A menagerie of half a dozen or so pick up trucks and jeeps littered the parking lot in front of the largest and central of the three wood structures that Ivy found himself in front of. It was painted what appeared to be lime green in the glow of the neon Coors sign and bare yellow light bulbs strung across its facade. A poorly hand-lettered sign identified the place as Rosie's Barandgrill.
Cool, thought Ivy, a Joni Mitchell fan.
His dad had been a big Joni Mitchell fan and Ivy remembered the song Barandgrill but had never seen it written as one word anywhere but on the album cover. Another, much smaller sign was printed in magic marker on a five by seven inch index card and thumbtacked to the front door. It read, "No Shirt, No Shoes, No Problem!" Tinny music and occasional bursts of laughter indicated that Rosie's was open for business, so Ivy shouldered his gear and rambled inside.
An assortment of observations insinuated themselves upon his consciousness: the tinny music was an old Dylan anti-war ballad coming from a 1950's art deco model pink plastic table-top radio at the end of the bar; Rosie, or the woman he assumed to be the proprietor, was a native American woman under five feet tall, with her jet black hair teased up like a country western singer and with boobs like basketballs; the ten men with their butts parked at the bar and around a couple of tables all looked like extras from a pirate movie, and except for Dylan's complaining about how he wasn't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more, you could've heard a pin drop.
All eyes were on the stranger. Suspicious eyes. Hostile eyes. Even a guy with a patch over one eye like an honest-to-goodness olde tyme pirate. They were mostly barefoot and shirtless, dirty and smelly, bearded and missing teeth. Most wore single gold hoop earrings. All wore either bowie knives or buck knives in black leather pouches at their belts. At least a few of them had hair as long as his own, a couple even longer, so he wasn't too worried about being teased or harassed for his appearance. Nonetheless, Ivy expected someone to say, "Arrgh, matey, shiver me timbers!" No one did.
Instead, Rosie, for indeed the big titted, red skinned midget was she, asked, "What do you want?" Emphasizing the you in such a distasteful way that there could be no mistaking the question for a friendly one.
"Uh, a cheeseburger and a Budwieser would be nice..."
"Budwieser, huh? You think you're in New York City or something? We got Coors."
:Uh, Coors is cool, thank you."
"How you want that burger?"
"Well done, please."
"Hrmph!"
Ivy settled his pack beneath a bar stool and pretended to read the menu posted over the pass-through window to the kitchen while Rosie disappeared.
As the Dylan tune ended, a deejay identified the station as 'the number one oldies station in the canyonland,' telling Ivy that he was either in southern Utah or northern Arizona. Not that it really mattered, he was only passing through, after all. The Velvet Underground began their admonition to walk on the wild side and the locals resumed their diverse conversations. By the time Rosie returned and slapped a still bloody burger down in front of him, the noise inside the Barandgrill had returned to the level it had been at before his intrusion.
Rosie remained standing right in front of Ivy as if daring him to mention that the burger was barely cooked. Instead, he said, "I see you're a Joni Mitchell fan."
"Whose Joni Mitchell?" she asked in what seemed like all sincerity.
A couple of the locals guffawed.
Ivy sipped his Coors.
Although the meat was nearly raw, the burger tasted unusually good. The tomato was firm and ripe, the lettuce was romaine, not iceberg, and the bun tasted like it had just been baked. It wasn't only a good deal for three ninety-five, it was satisfying and filling.
As Sam the Sham and his Pharaohs sang, "Mally told Sally about this thang she saw," Ivy tucked a ten spot under his plate to cover the burger, two long necks and a two dollar tip. As he turned on his bar stool and bent to pick up his backpack, he came face to face with a khaki uniform and a gold badge that said, "Sheriff." "You're under arrest." said a firm but gentle voice from somewhere inside the uniform.
"Uh, what for?" Ivy asked in what he hoped wasn't too demanding a tone.
"Vagrancy." the sheriff replied. He looked like Robert Redford.
"But I'm not a vagrant, I have money and, uh, traveller's checks..."
"Then we'll make it resisting arrest. Come on with me, son."
The sheriff turned and walked out the door, leaving Ivy to Pick up his gear and follow red-faced as the locals laughed and hoo-hawed at him.
By the time Ivy had gathered up his backpack and made it through the door of Rosie's Barandgrill, the sheriff was halfway across the road. By the time Ivy was halfway across the road, the sheriff was already inside the courthouse/jail. He left the door open and never once looked back to see if his prisoner was complying with his order. Ivy couldn't decide whether the sheriff was the epitome of self confidence or simply dim witted.
"Shut that door, will ya?"
"Yes, sir."
"What's yer name, son?"
"Uh, Will... Will McGill... Will McGill the fourth, sir."
"Sounds like a god damn limerick." the Robert Redford clone snorted.
"Most folks just call me Ivy, Sheriff, for the Roman numeral for four. It's an eye and a vee."
"I'm not dim witted, son. I know what Roman numerals are. Put yer stuff in here." He held open the door to the jail's single cell.
"Uh, Sheriff, I gotta tell you that I have a weapon in my pack."
"Well you're most likely not gonna need it tonight, son. Shut the door if you wanna, but it won't do you no good. It don't lock."
"Am I really under arrest, Sheriff? I didn't do anything wrong and I really do have money; I'm not a vagrant."
"Hell no, son, you're not under arrest. If I'd a let you sack out under the stars them old boys over to Rosie's woulda had your carcass for breakfast."
"Oh. Uh, thanks... I guess." Ivy propped up his backpack under the stainless steel sink and spread his sleeping bag over the aluminum framed army cot in the eight by ten foot jail cell. He rolled up a couple of pair of jeans for a pillow and was about to call out a good night to his host when a familiar scent reached his nostrils. Since the cell door was open, he strolled out into the main office to find the Sheriff, his Tony Lamas propped up on his desk, toking on a fat spliff. When the Sheriff saw his guest approach, he held out the sweet smelling joint to him as if they were old high school buddies.
"This isn't some kinda trick is it?" Ivy asked, accepting the joint anyway.
"What am I gonna do, son, throw your ass in jail?" the Sheriff asked, making himself laugh and lose the hit he had just taken. Ivy laughed too.
Before they finished the joint, Ivy retrieved his own bag of Kentucky blue skunk weed from his left boot and helped himself to the pack of zig zags on the Sheriff's desk. As the joints turned to roaches, one by one, he learned that he was in Arizona, due south of the Havasupai reservation in the Coconino National Forest. As it turned out, the crew in the Barandgrill weren't pirates after all, but miners and loggers. A little mining actually got done every once in a while, the Sheriff explained, but no trees were ever cut down.
"All them boys over to Rosie's grew up 'round here." The Sheriff said, "Most of their folks settled around here in the middle and late sixties."
"Hippies?" Ivy asked.
"Draft dodgers and pot farmers. I knew most of the old timers when I was with the Park Service, which was my own dodge to the god damn draft. By seventy-five, when Nixon surrendered to North Viet Nam, I took an early retirement and ran for Sheriff. They been re-electing me every year ever since then, as kinda 'lord high protector' of the local loco weed crop. I just keep 'em from snuffing innocent passers-by like yerself."
Ivy's mind was ablaze with questions. Nixon surrendered to North Viet Nam? A town that was founded by hippies? The Sheriff protects the reefer crop? Had he wandered into a bad movie?
"How do you know I'm not some kinda federal agent?"
"I don't. Been plenty of feds sat right where you're sittin' and smoked this here same weed with me... But nobody never seen or heard from 'em since then. Son, it'd be a god damn shame if you was to disappear like that."
"Well, uh, don't worry, I'm not a fed - or any other kinda cop. I don't even like cops... Uh, no offense."
"None taken. I don't like 'em either. Fuckin' sociopaths for the most part; bullies with badges, whose self image is so low that havin' a badge and a gun gives 'em more self esteem than they'd ever be able to muster otherwise. But the Park Service, now that's another story... Rangers are tops."
Every Ranger Ivy had ever met had been way cooler than any cop he'd even heard of, so he said, "I'll smoke to that!" and they did.
In fact, they smoked until it was beginning to get light outside and Ivy's once fat bag of bluegrass was nearly depleted. He had the feeling that if he had continued to roll 'em up, the Sheriff would have smoked every last speck of it, although for his own part he had produced only that one joint of the local stuff.
When it became apparent that Ivy wasn't going to roll up any more of what remained from his own diminished stash, the Sheriff stumbled into his quarters in the rear of the building.
"Answer the phone if it rings, son. Just say 'Sheriff's office' but don't wake me up unless it's an emergency." He shut the door, leaving Ivy to wonder what might constitute an emergency.
It wasn't the phone that awoke Ivy at a little after one that afternoon, but an angel. A breathtakingly beautiful angel with turquoise blue eyes and full, pink lips and breath like French vanilla ice cream. An angel with golden blonde feathered hair and nearly transparent eyebrows and lashes and Navajo silver and turquoise earrings with little silver feathers that dangled down and a National Forrest Service Smokey-the-Bear hat pushed way back on her pretty and perfectly shaped head. The angel, Ivy noticed, had a three fifty-seven magnum strapped to her ample, well-rounded hip.
"Who the hell are you?" the angel demanded, in a sweet voice that was not unlike a drill sergeant's in spite of its nearly overpowering femininity. The angel was leaning over Ivy so that he could see that she was wearing a pink bra that was completely unnecessary for such small and firm breasts.
"What the hell are you doing here?" she insisted.
"Uh, good morning, ma'am."
"Don't you 'good morning' me! Where's the god damn Sheriff?"
"Uh, Sheriff? Oh! The Sheriff! I guess he's still asleep, ma'am. Is this an emergency?"
"It's gonna be an emergency if you don't stop trying to look down my blouse! If you wanna see some titties, go across the god damn street and give poor little Rosie a hard time like all the other horny jack asses around here!"
"Molly? Is that you, baby girl?" the Sheriff intervened in the proverbial nick of time.
"You're god damned right it's me." The angel turned away from Ivy to answer the Sheriff, allowing Ivy to breathe again. He had never seen a lovelier woman.
"This shit has got to stop, Uncle Bob. I'm not kidding! If you don't get those lazy fucks to cut a truckload of trees or two, the Service is gonna give the timber rights to one of the big paper companies and we'll all be fucked up the ass forever!"
"Son, go across the street and tell Rosie we need breakfast for three. Sit down, baby girl, take a load off."
As Ivy closed the door behind him, he heard the angel begin to cry. He wanted to go back and comfort her, to take her in his arms and press her perfect face against his shoulder until all her fear and sorrow evaporated. He wanted to smell her sweet breath again, to gaze once more down her blouse at those perfect little boobies. He sprinted across the road and into Rosie's Barandgrill.
"Good Morning, Miss Rosie." he addressed the diminutive woman behind the bar.
"You Sheriff Bob's errand boy?" she asked him instead of replying.
"Uh, yeah, I s'poze so. He said to get breakfast for three."
"That pretty Miss Molly over to the Sheriff's this mornin?"
"Yes ma'am." he replied, feeling his face turn only slightly redder than the Indian woman's.
"Sorry about last night." Rosie offered. "If I'd a known you worked for the Sheriff, I woulda fixed that burger up right for ya."
"The burger was great, Rosie, really. A little raw, but still the best I ever had."
"You have nice manners for a white boy." she said, placing a large paper grocery bag on the bar, "We'll see how long it takes you to grow out of 'em."
"Uh, how much do I owe you?" Ivy asked as he fidgeted in his pocket for money to pay for breakfast.
"Long as you work for the Sheriff and Miss Molly, you don't never pay for nothin' 'round here, you understand me, boy?"
"Uh, yes, ma'am, I s'poze I do."
When he returned to the jail with their breakfast, Ivy found that the angel, whom he had correctly surmised to be a Forest Ranger named Molly, and who also turned out to be the Sheriff's niece, was dabbing at her stunningly beautiful eyes with a tissue that was so badly scrunched up that it looked as though it had been through a medieval torture chamber. The Sheriff was twisting a fat spliff and trying to comfort her.
"Lookie here, Molly, the Forrest Service can't withdraw the contract after all these years. The timber's in better shape now than it's ever been. The water's cleaner and the soil's richer than it was twenty years ago. Your own work proves it. These boys aren't too bright, but they love this forrest. It's their home, just like it's yours and mine. As long as they pay the lease the Service can't sell the rights out from under them!"
"I know, I know." the angel sobbed, "but there's gonna be an investigation. They're sending suits in from the city to see why no trees are being cut. I'm scared Uncle Bob!"
"Don't be scared, Molly." Ivy heard someone saying in his own voice.
"Who the fuck are you?" she demanded, turning to him as though seeing him for the first time.
"This here is my new helper, Ivy. Ivy, you met my sister's baby girl didn't ya?"
"Uh, yes, sir, I sure did."
"We're fucked in the ass!" Molly exclaimed as she burst into tears anew.
Breakfast turned out to be a six pack of Coors longnecks, three large go cups, a quart of V-8 and a large bag of reheated crinkle cut french fries. The Sheriff filled all three go cups with V-8, sprinkling each liberally with pepper and tabasco sauce he produced from a desk drawer. As they drank, he topped off each glass with beer. After a very short while, as the French fries disappeared, the red drinks turned to golden amber.
By the time the beer was all gone and several joints had been smoked, Molly had composed herself nicely. She was no longer a mere angel, but a veritable goddess of righteousness, a credit to her close-fitting uniform and the paragon of confidence and authority. By contrast, her uncle Bob looked more like Barney Fife than like Robert Redford. It took all the self control that Ivy could muster to keep from grovelling at her feet in praise and worship.
There had been a conversation that might as well have been in a secret code or foreign language for all that Ivy understood any of it. All he could think of was a French vanilla angel with a three fifty-seven magnum and a pink brassier.
"Son," the Sheriff said, bringing him out of his daydream, "I want you to take a ride with the Ranger here. And you'll leave that pistola of yours in your cell if you wanna come back in one piece."
A ride with the Ranger? Ranger Molly, the beautiful, pear-shaped angel? Ivy wondered if he had heard right or if it was just his imagination playing tricks on him. Wishful thinking, most likely.
"Did you hear me, son?"
"Uh, yes sir!
Ranger Molly didn't say much on the half hour trip, but drove like a bat out of hell. The babyshit green Blazer skidded and bounced down a dirt road to a fire lane, then slid and sputtered down the fire lane to a logging trail. After endless sharp, tire-squealing turns and countless steep hills that made Disneyworld's Space Mountain seem like a wheelchair ride at the old folk's home, the logging trail ended abruptly in a clearing that appeared to be a hideaway for juvenile delinquent boy scouts.
There were several old cabin style tents that looked as though they had grown from the forrest itself. Beyond the tents were what appeared to be tipis. In the center of the clearing a large circle of stones contained ashes from what must surely have been the campfires of several generations of hippies. Naked children chased dogs that looked more than half wolf in and out of the tents. Several women and girls were gathered around an open air wood stove. The pirates Ivy had seen at Rosie's the night before were there, too, and more of them than he remembered.
"Good golly, miss Molly!" some of the pirates shouted, while others verbally solicited sexual favors and pantomimed obscene gestures.
"Hey," Ivy said to them, "that's no way to talk to a lady!"
"Shut the fuck up, ashole!" Molly said to him. He didn't say another word.
It was obvious that some of the men recognized him from the previous evening. He heard the word 'narc' repeated quite a few times, with no attempt on anyone's part to keep their voices down. Ivy found himself almost instantly in the center of a ring of thickly muscled, sweaty, smelly lumberjacks and miners.
"Uncle Bob says he's cool." Molly protested.
"He's a fucking narc!" someone replied.
"String 'im up!" someone else suggested.
Out of nowhere a rope appeared.
Holy shit, Ivy thought, is this what it's like to be lynched?
Judging rightly that resistance would be futile, Ivy allowed himself to be tied to a wooden chair of the type that used to grace public libraries in the fifties and sixties. From the periphery of his vision he saw his angel escape to her Forrest Service Chevy and raise a cloud of dust as she peeled out in reverse down the logging trail. If the situation hadn't been so melodramatically comical, Ivy would have been terrified.
A fire was kindled within the ring of stones and dead wood was piled on until it was a raging bonfire. The chair to which he was tied was placed inside the circle of stones. With a clarity of thought that completely baffled himself, he wondered if this was what Joan of Arc felt like when she was being executed. But he didn't get off that easily.
Someone pulled his head back by his long hair while someone else poured something into his mouth. It tasted like cheap wine. When the person pulling his hair finally let go, he saw that it was Ernest and Julio's Cabernet Saviegnon, with a thousand little scraps of paper floating around in it. He could taste and feel many of the little scraps of paper in his mouth and throat as well.
"You're gonna tell us who you are, motherfucker! You're gonna tell us who you're working for and who sent you here and who you were sent to spy on! You're gonna tell us everything we wanna know before we toss your ass in the fire!"
The face that growled at him was dirty and scarred and only inches from his own, a face he had seen the night before at Rosie's. It was the pirate with a gold earring and a patch over his left eye. His breath stank.
"You're D.E.A, aren't you!?!" the pirate demanded, causing Ivy to laugh in spite of the circumstances he was in. He suspected that the tiny scraps of paper in the wine were hits of acid. He had dropped so much acid in high school that he could make himself trip any time he wanted to just by thinking about it. These dumb-fuck country bumpkins had no idea of that, though, and Ivy knew it.
"Gimme some more of that electric kool aid, asshole, and go brush your god damned teeth!" he growled back at one-eye.
"Are you C.I.A?" someone screamed as someone else pulled his head back again and more acid-dosed wine was poured down his throat. He could feel the hair on his legs beginning to singe.
I knew I shoulda worn long pants today he thought to himself.
"Are you D.E.A? C.I.A? F.B.I? A.T.F?" he was asked in such rapid succession that he began to laugh out loud at his tormenters.
"I'm E, I, E, I, O, you idiot motherfuckers! Gimme s'more of that cheap, shitty wine!"
"He's definitely C.I.A. Trained!" he heard someone say after a while, "They're trained to be immune to LSD!"
"I'm Poison fucking Ivy, you assholes, and you're all infected!" He laughed but not hysterically. As irrational as his statement was, it triggered a fear in the pirates that could be seen in their faces.
"What the hell do you mean by that?"
"We're infected withwhat?"
"Who the fuck are you!?!"
All Ivy had to eat that day were couple of greasy French fries and a couple of bottles of beer. It had only been three o'clock in the afternoon when he and Molly, the tiny-tittied, big-bottomed, gun-toting angel-goddess Ranger Molly with breath like French vanilla ice cream, oh god I wanna kiss your pretty face, Molly, had fallen down the rabbit hole into this enchanted wonderland forrest full of wanna-be weird-oh pirates. Now it was full dark and he was most definitely well into a very heavy acid trip.
One-eye was in his face again, like a broken record, demanding, "Who are you working for!?! You better tell us or we're gonna burn you down!"
Had one-eye been gone for a while? Had he gone and brushed his teeth? Ivy laughed out loud at the thought."
"He's either deep-cover D.E.A. or he's a hard core acid head." said a familiar voice. Somehow it made him think of Robert Redford and Barney Fife at the same time. "Cut him loose." A large Bowie knife flashed before his eyes and Ivy was sure that he had been decapitated. Then the ropes that had bound him were magically gone and Sheriff Bob stood on one side of him, Ranger Molly on the other. This time he couldn't stop himself from kneeling at her feet and kissing her Vasque hiking boots.
"You're soooo beautiful!" he blubbered, over and over again, "You're soooo bee-you-tee-full!"
"Poison Ivy," Molly muttered, "that's all this forrest needs!"
By the time daylight filtered into the clearing the drumming and dancing had come to a conclusion and the fire had died down to a heap of smoldering coals. Weary and wired pirates stumbled about the clearing like the wolf-dogs that followed them around, gluttonously seizing remnants of the past night's feast and revelry and running away with a scrap of meat on a bone or some neglected bottle with a sip or two of wine left in it. When they found such treasure. Ivy was alive but could not feel his feet touch the ground when he walked. The toes and straps of his Teva sandals were partially melted and burned. His shirt was gone but he still had his cutoff levis on. The fronts of his legs were bald and blistered but he felt no pain.
Without benefit of a mirror, he knew that his eyes looked like the twin flashing red lights at a railroad crossing, complete with the hooded black housings and clanging bells. The three day beard didn't bother him any more than the taste in his mouth did but he had no idea which way town was from the hollow, which was surrounded by mesas and canyons. His best bet, he decided, was to travel downhill until he came to water that he could wash his face in and rinse his mouth out with.
As he floated noiselessly through the forest, he found himself suddenly on a switchback of the logging trail, not twenty feet from where Ranger Molly stood beside her Chevy Blazer.
"Yatahey." she called to him, slow pitching a canteen in a high arc toward him.
"Uh, thanks." he managed to say, catching the canteen solidly but awkwardly.
Molly looked as though she'd had a good night's sleep and a hot bath, as fresh as when he had first seen her early yesterday afternoon. Ivy knew better, though. The danger rangerette had remained on the outer fringes of the goings-on all night, leaning on a tree sipping longnecks and warning off any and all advances with authority that came from her turquoise eyes and inner fire rather than the badge on her chest or the gun on her hip.
"Uncle Bob wants to see you, Poison." she called behind to him as she slid into the Blazer and turned the key. Ivy emptied the canteen over his head as he skipped to get in behind her, shoving her pretty butt across the bench seat and taking the wheel.
"Are we pointed in the right direction?" he asked as he shifted into low gear.
"Yep. Just follow this trail to the fire lane and turn left, then right onto the county road."
The ride back to the courthouse was more fun than a video game for Ivy, who didn't stop to think until they were nearly to the Sheriff's office that there were no free lives to use if the 'game over' sign came on.
"Pull into Rosie's" Molly ordered when the center of town came into sight.
Ivy skidded the Chevy to a stop in a cloud of dust and raced around the truck to open Molly's door for her. Did she blush? Just a little? Was she smirking as he followed her into the Barandgrill like an obedient pet?
Sheriff Bob sat at the bar next to an old hippie with a long grey ponytail tied up in a red bandanna, a tie dyed tee shirt, wranglers and a pair of high-top moccasins. On the other side of the hippie from the Sheriff sat an obese middle aged Hispanic gentleman in slacks, a dress shirt and vest. At first Ivy assumed that he was Mexican, but later found out he was from Cuba. The three were deep in conversation and didn't look up when Molly and Ivy sat at the bar beside them.
"Mornin' Rosie." Ivy said as happily as he could manage.
"Yatahey, Poison Ivy" she grinned at him knowingly. He made a note that word travels quickly in such a small community, then asked, "What's that mean, Rosie? 'Yatahey?' is it Indian?"
"Nah, not Hindian, Navajo." She continued to grin at him, "Means, 'peace, we're friends.'"
"Means, 'greetings, I come in peace.'" Molly clarified.
"Near as I can figure it means, 'hello, I come in peace, please don't kill me.'" Sheriff Bob added, turning his attention to Ivy for the first time. "You have a good time at your little welcoming celebration last night? Ready to get down to work?"
"Look Sheriff, I had a real nice time and everything, but, uh, I'm just passin' through, ya know."
"Bullshit, son, you're here for a reason."
"You don't seriously think I'm C.I.A. or anything, do you?"
"That's not what I meant, son. Looky here: If you was a spook, you'd have a reason and you'd know what it was. You'd prob'ly make up another one to bullshit us with to boot. But just 'cause you don't know what the reason is don't mean that there ain't some reason you don't know about."
Rosie knocked on the wood of the bar while Molly and the old hippie said, "right on!" under their breaths in unison.
Ivy gulped half of the V-8 from the frosty mug Rosie had placed before him and topped it off from the adjacent longneck. Looking the Sheriff straight in the eye he asked, "Is that supposed to make any kind of sense at all?"
"I bet a smart boy like you could figure a way for us to keep the Feds from pullin' that timber contract out from under us, if you was to put your mind to it." Rosie offered.
"Well, uh, the best way I know of to get folks to let you keep somethin' they wanna take away from you is to tell 'em you don't want it and, uh, just ask 'em to please take it away..." Ivy replied.
The old hippie and the Cuban gentleman swiveled on their barstools to face each other, their eyes widening as they turned. Sheriff Bob gagged on a sip of his beer and straightened up on his barstool, the frown on his weathered face replaced by a blank but contemplative stare into the middle distance. Rosie's face split into an enormous grin that made her seem six feet tall. Ranger Molly's smile beamed like a searchlight, her perfect face even more angelic than usual.
"No fucking shit!" she exclaimed, "Reverse psychology!"
Euphoria swept over Ivy at the change his statement had caused in her demeanor. Encouraged and inspired, he went on.
"And, uh, if you ask 'em for something they don't wanna give you, there's an even better chance that they'll let you keep whatever it is they think you don't want."
The sheriff slumped on his barstool. Rosie's smile disappeared. The Cuban got up and came around behind Ivy, asking him, "What you think we're gonna ask the Department of the Interior of the United States for, boy?" The old hippie had is face in his hands. Molly, however, continued to beam brightly and beautifully, her eyes locked on Ivy. It was all the encouragement he needed to continue.
"Uh, what kinda stuff do timber crews use? Big ole trucks, I bet, and chainsaws and stuff like that. We oughtta make a list." He turned to the Sheriff and asked, "You gotta computer?"
"Sure I do, son, it's right out back in my god damned space ship."
"Don't be so fucking rude, Uncle Bob, I think I know what Poison has in mind." Molly intervened, "I gotta typewriter up at the Ranger Station." She said as she grabbed Ivy by the arm and practically pulled him off of his barstool and headed for the door. He barely managed to grab his half bottle of beer from the bar as he stumbled in her wake.
"This is gonna work; I know it is!" she shouted behind her to everyone at once and no one in particular.
"It better work." the Cuban said as he too headed for the door.
"Wait a minute," Rosie stopped him, "you owe me fourteen dollars and fifty cents. she smiled synthetically at him.
He eyeballed the collection of empty longnecks on the bar where he'd been sitting and peeled a twenty from a fat roll of bills and dropped it on the bar in front of the Indian woman and said, "Conyo!" before turning and leaving in measured steps.
"You're welcome." Rosie called after him in her friendliest voice as she tucked the twenty into her pocket.
When Ivy pulled Molly's babyshit green Blazer into the parking lot of Rosie's Barandgrill at a little after noon, it was littered with old pickup trucks and jeeps parked at odd angles to one another. There was barely enough room to maneuver between them. Somehow Ivy managed to park the Forest Service vehicle directly in front of the entrance and stepped from the truck into the Barandgrill with Ranger Molly attached to his arm. In her free hand she waved a sheath of freshly typed papers, shouting, "Every one of you asshole motherfuckers is gonna sign this paper right fucking now! Make a line, god damn it!"
She slapped the petition on the bar and every pirate in the place obeyed her command without question, each signing the petition without reading it. Molly began explaining what the petition was for without telling anyone exactly what it said.
"We're asking the Feds to give us half a dozen new five-ton trucks, a shitload of new chainsaws, laser surveying equipment and just about a third of a million dollars in new timber gear." she shouted unnecessarily into the near-silence of the hushed room.
"We're also demanding that they release us from any and all obligations of all prior contracts if they don't meet these terms and give us the equipment we need to cut the timber.
"Wait a minute!" someone shouted, "What do you mean, release us from the contract? That's just what we don't want 'em to do!"
"That's right, shit for brains, and it's just what they're gonna do anyway if we can't make 'em believe it's what we want 'em to do!"
The Sheriff kept the line moving and pirates signing the petition while Molly fielded questions and explained the concept of reverse psychology from various perspectives. Within half an hour there were more than three hundred signatures on the petition. It was twenty after one in the afternoon when Sheriff Bob herded Ivy and Molly out the door and across the street to his office. The yuppies from town were supposed to arrive at two and they were never early or late but prompt and efficient as the Dodge Aries K they arrived in.
"This here is our Mayor, Mister Ivy McGill." the Sheriff introduced Ivy to the two men and one woman who were all dressed alike in steel grey slacks and navy blue blazers. With the three was the Cuban Ivy had met earlier at Rosie's. He extended his hand and said, "It's nice to see you again, Mister Mayor. It's been a long time. I'd like for you to meet my colleagues..." and introduced them each by name. Ivy had no idea who the man was or whom he represented but was left with no choice other than playing the role of Mayor.
"Uh, hi... Welcome to our, uh, community." he managed to say, wondering what the name of the community might be. "I know it ain't much compared to the big city but, uh, we're pretty proud of it."
Before Ivy could put his foot in his mouth the Sheriff saved him by asking Molly, "S'cuze me but you got that petition the Mayor passed around last week, Ranger?"
"Yes, sir. I'm sorry to be the one to have to say it but the people around here are making some demands on us that I think we're gonna have to meet or they're gonna wanna be let out of the timber contract..." she explained to the Cuban and his colleagues, siding herself with them almost melodramatically.
For the next three hours Ivy and Molly pretended to argue over things Ivy knew nothing about while the Cuban adamantly insisted, on behalf of the U.S. Department of the Interior that the contract could not be broken under any circumstances. His colleagues pitched in to back him up when they could.
Meanwhile, the Sheriff insisted that without a third of a million dollars worth of new equipment there was no way the timber could be harvested.
Three pots of coffee later an agreement was reached. The timber contract was renewed and the government would supply a hundred thousand dollars in aid to the community. Feeling superior and victorious, the yuppies piled into their Dodge.
"Uh, thanks for your help, Mister Gomez." Ivy said as he shook the mysterious Cuban's hand.
"Call me Jorge, Mister Mayor." he replied with a wink.
As the Dodge sped east Ivy turned to the Sheriff and asked, "Where's Molly?"
"I dunno, son, she was right here a minute ago..."
As they looked around for her she emerged from the jail with Ivy's gear slung over her shoulder.
Without a word she carried it across the road and threw it into the back of her Blazer.
"Be gentle with her, son," the Sheriff told Ivy, "she ain't never been with a man before."
"You mean she's a..."
"She's a wildcat, son, she just ain't never been with a man before, that's all.
It had never been Molly's intention to marry a politician. Nor had it ever been Ivy's ambition to become one. They both loved the wilderness, nature and the freedom of being on their own. They loved each other, too.
For each of them, love was a decission they had made, not something they had fallen into. As Molly herself explained to Ivy as she drove him to her cabin after the impromptu election held in Rosie's Barandgrill, "People fall into holes in the gound, they fall into ditches, they fall into traps... Love isn't a hole in the ground, it isn't a ditch and it certainly isn't a trap! Love is a commitment to care for and nurture another person, to conciously strive to make that person as happy as they can be made to be."
Ivy nodded in mute agreement, unable to speak for the lump in his throat. Even though he couldn't have put it as well, what Molly said was exactly the way he felt about the subject. He hadn't fallen in love with her. He saw in her traits that he admired; the integrety, intelligence and inner strength that he liked to believe others saw in him too.
She was right, he had made a consious decission to make her happiness and well-being his main priority in life. It seemed to him as though that was only a part of the equation, though. Could any lasting love be one-sided? No. There had to be reciprocity. There has to be a shared and mutual caring for each other's happiness. Otherwise, a relationship would be like one of those whining redneck ballads where the theme is always, "I love her but she don't love me."
There was equity in their relationship and Ivy knew peace in his heart as he realized that Molly had made a mental commitment in the same way he had. Somehow he had become Mayor of this strange community and the beginnings of a plan were forming in his mind.
Running against Uncle Bob for Sheriff might not be a bad idea when next November's election rolled around, if Uncle Bob followed through on Molly's advice to run for the State Senate in two years.
It turned out that Jorge Gomez, who really was in the C.I.A, and had been since the Bay of Pigs, was also the local Justice of the Peace. He was also related to Molly, being her mother's and Uncle Bob's first cousin, and would perform the wedding ceremony Molly was already making elaborate plans for.
As she rambled on about having authentic leis of fresh flowers flown in from Hawaii for the blessed event and the naming of babies who would each be living examples of their love for one another, Ivy revelled in bliss at the thought of entering a legal and binding marriage contract that would make him belong forever to this beautiful angel.
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