“Women need men, men need women,” said Jonah. “That’s as old as the Bible. And with me you get the added benefit of protection.”
“Protection?” She was winding him up on purpose, but there was a freak-show quality from which she couldn’t look away. Come see the geek. Come see the sword swallower. Come see the drunk proto-misogynist.
“This country’s going between the rock and the hard place, proverbially speaking. We’re about ten years away from fucking meltdown, mark my words. We got so much debt, we’re drowning. And as soon as those bills come due, who you think they’re gonna make pay? Not the parasites. Not the food stampers. It’ll be the people actually making this country run. That’s who the government will ask to bail them out. Then what happens?”
Her playfulness dissipated at this political millenarianism, and now she wished she hadn’t asked.
“What happens is we got a narcotic in this country. We got welfare dependency so much so that it’s—it’s a narcotic. Now half the country’s a drug addict and there’s more and more starting to get in line for their handout. What happens is as soon as the balance tips…” He held his arm in a diagonal slash and then, like a teeter-totter, dropped it abruptly. “All those people just start voting more and more for themselves. That’s what these whole Obama years have been about. That black man just gave his people what they voted for him for. And what part of the population is growing? It’s not the white half, I’ll tell you that. It’s the drug addict part. And it doesn’t matter if you get Obama out. If you impeach him or whatever. They’re just going to vote themselves another Obama the next election because now there’s more of them than there are of us.”
“And the teeming hordes just get what they want, huh.”
“What they think they want,” he corrected. “But then all the businessmen who make this country run, who create all the jobs and the wealth, you think they’re going to stick around? They’ll take their factories and businesses to other countries or they’ll go out of business all together. Just close up shop. It’s already happening. Who do you think makes this country run?”
She pointed to their waitress, waiting for the Navy man to make up his mind about pie. “Her?”
“You know that’s not what I mean. Why do you think the country’s getting browner, huh? Why do you think all the Mexicans and Guatemalans and Haitians…” He began ticking them off on his fingers, his voice gaining righteousness. “… Indians, Cambodians, Nigerians, Kenyans, Angolans, Iraqis, Afghans, Vietnamese, Sudanese, Chinese—whatever—why do you think they all want to come here?”
She would have been impressed if Jonah had been able to name that many nationalities sober. She couldn’t help but troll him back, all thoughts of asking him about Lisa vanished in the heat of this abrupt and unhinged political argument.
“Because the desert is expanding and the water tables are dropping and it’s getting harder to grow food. So there’s this mad dash to wall oneself off in Fortress America. Not coincidentally in the air-conditioned exurban housing developments you and your dad sell.”
“Ha ha!” he cried, and the waitress looked up from her check pad. He jabbed the table for emphasis. “They’re here ’cause they heard about the handouts. No one ever kicks you off. Get one baby born here, and you’re set. You’re American now, even if you can’t speak the language, don’t know the history, don’t have any common cause with your fellow countrymen. You can still cash your check.”
“What do you propose then, Jonah? If the barbarians are at the gate like you say?”
“There’s stuff going down right now. Tonight, I’m talking.” He all but glanced around to see who might be listening. Still only two bored waitresses and an old man at the counter waiting on his pie. “I’m not saying I got anything to do with it, but I might have given a few people a few bucks to grease the wheels.”
“You’re making no sense.”
“Oh, but I am.” He rolled his swollen, purple-filling eyes and ticked the next steps off on his fingers with a happy cadence. “These guys, they get their package tonight. Then in a few weeks they can go teach the parasites a lesson. Then you and me, we get to South Bass Island. My family’s got a house there.”
“You mentioned that.” She tried to ask what he’d meant by the rest, but again he talked over her.
“And there are others. Phil Shackley, he owns the largest propane supplier in the Midwest. Kathleen Harden—she and her sons own about a million Subway franchises in the state. Jerry Mortzheimer, he’s got a huge chain of earth-moving equipment. We’re arming the island, bringing in resources. Guns, ammunition, food, medical supplies, water systems. We been talking about it ever since oh-eight. Now we have a place, when everything starts going to shit, we get to South Bass Island. Let everyone else out here eat each other when they run out of food stamps. And all the talent and business will escape, and then they’ll be begging us, begging us for help, begging us for…”
He trailed off. Some fatigue seemed to overcome him during that speech, and he slowly lowered his head to the table. He gathered his hands as a pillow under his skull the way they had in high school classes. His eyes slipped shut. The two napkins jutted from each nostril like little crumpled flags. She forgave him his ravings because she knew how they likely helped: focus your rage, your disappointment, your sorrow onto anything else. Allow the troubled, complex world to collapse into identifiable points of easily rendered resentment. Cling to a satisfying fire and use it to hold one’s demons at bay.
After Lisa left in June 2004, Stacey kept trying to recall clues. The problem was that she’d been so wrapped up in this enigma named Lisa Han—especially the last months when they were really and fiercely “together”—that she may have been semi-blind as to what was going on with her.
That’s what happens when you’re taking a risk, savoring the thrill of sin, writhing in the backseat of her mom’s old Pontiac Sunfire, their shirts pulled off, Lisa’s dangling from an arm, her eyes grinding shut in concentration, tongue snaking out to glaze her plump lower lip. All the places their old boyfriends took them to get their pants off. Never the Brew because that’s where the rest of the high school would be. Lisa would clamp a hand over Stacey’s mouth, but her high, muffled cries would pierce that veil. All day, every day—any amount of time that surrounded those fleeting encounters—panic lived like a hot stone in her gut.
Just before Christmas break 2003, they’d skipped the dance after a basketball game and hit Wendy’s with the plan to drive around and pig out. She asked Lisa if they could talk about what was happening, and the conversation did not go well.
“I always assumed I was bi,” said Lisa, chocolate eyes studying the road. “Never thought I would’ve done anything about it. But c’mon, I wasn’t best friends with Kaylyn all that time for her insights on the human condition.”
“Did you guys ever… ?”
“I wish,” she scoffed. “Settled for my second choice.”
From the driver’s seat, Stacey threw a fry at her. “Shut up.”
She picked it off her boob where the grease had stuck it and popped it into her mouth.
“Look, no offense, but who the fuck fucking cares or gives a fuck?” she said. “We’re having fun. We’ll keep it between us. No one’ll know, and no big deal. I don’t see what there is to worry about.”
“Yeah, besides Romans 1:26, Leviticus 18:22, I guess nothing.”
Lisa glanced at her, trying to gauge how serious she was, which was very. This was 2003, when the issue of gay marriage was everywhere, and every time it came up on a talk show or in the news, Stacey could feel herself growing hot, could feel the pit of fire Tina had spent their childhoods describing, and she’d make any excuse to leave the room. For as long as she could remember, Pastor Jack had served up at least semiannual sermons on the topic, and now, as it gained steam in the media, so did he. Homosexuality is an abomination. That’s not my word. That’s the Bible’s word. That’s God’s word. That doesn’t mean we can’t have compassion for those who stray from a righteous path. That doesn’t mean we’re not all guilty of sin in a multitude of ways. But that is the word of God, and it’s our duty to abide by that in our lives. We treat sinners with compassion always, but we can never turn a blind eye to sin. It wasn’t like Stacey hadn’t seen her mom nodding along in agreement with Pastor Jack, head ticking up and back in metronome rhythm while Stacey watched her from the corner of her eye. To this day, if she smelled the odor of her church, this scent of dusty library books mixed with citrus incense, a shameful heat would rise in her face.