I see it’s an older woman, classic Altavista, short hair western shirt nice white pants, she could actually be my grandmother back from the dead, except that my grandmother loved being a Californian, loved going down to the cities, loved eating Crab Louie in San Francisco and tacos in San Diego and going to Los Angeles to visit her cowboy friends in the film lots. I can’t in my bones believe that she would support any of this but then again she was a Republican her whole life and maybe this is where that ends up now. I’d also like to think my grandmother wouldn’t say “Barack Hussein Obama” like a curse. I realize it’s a luxury, not to know.
This lady says “We’re just having a terrible time up here. Our economy is hurting. My husband and I were looking at property recently and the number of foreclosures—we just couldn’t believe it. Like the gentleman said, we’ve lived here all our lives and this was just a paradise. We had all the industries we needed and we were providing food to the whole nation. Something has to change, I don’t know what but it seems like this is the closest thing to an answer we’re going to find. I just hope we can do it in time.” In time for what? She leaves the podium very straight back very fine paper skin on her hands and her forearms and makes her way slowly to her husband who is older and has a walker in front of him, darker skin like he might be Native although why a Native American would support this movement is a mystery and is I guess unlikely. I wonder how many people here in Paiute County can say they are Paiute let alone in this room. The old-timers’ accounts in the historical pamphlets sometimes have some loyal character named e.g. Indian John who helped out at the ranch and was like a brother to them in all ways but the most important one. Maybe the malaise, all the rotting homes and sagging enterprise, are punishment for taking the land. Maybe nothing good is ever happening on this land again for anybody.
There is a very young woman making her way to the microphone, she is beech-tree slim fair-skinned straight strawberry blond hair and can’t be more than fifteen I think, and how awful that her parents are trotting her out like this when she can’t even vote etc. etc., and she begins speaking. “I’m not even from Paiute County,” she says confidingly. “I live down in Shasta, but I wanted to come up here to tell you that we are with you. Other counties are with you. The next generation is with you. I’ve lived in the North State my whole life, all twenty-three years, and I tell you now as a wife and mother myself”—impossible, I think to myself—“the State of Jefferson is the kind of place I want to raise my baby son now.” A hooting sound, and a blur of happy motions around a sturdy good-looking man with a beard, who is wearing the Snugli with the infant. “We didn’t have the problems of the rest of the state,” she is saying. “We didn’t have drugs, or gang violence, or those types of urban problems.” There it is, I think. Suddenly I have a vivid memory of someone at my grandfather’s funeral cornering a pregnant blonde near me and asking apropos of nothing if she was “gonna give it one of those names like Sharniqua,” an interaction I didn’t quite grasp. Maybe this is about Urban Problems. But she is going on. “We don’t need to pay a tax for a water tunnel or a bullet train we’re never gonna use, we don’t need to send our water down south, and we know we’ve got everything we need right here. Anyway, we’re with you,” she says, so confident. She heads back to her little tribe and cups her baby’s head in her hand and her husband puts his arm around her. Bitch, I think. Clabbers leans forward into the microphone and says “I’m not supposed to say anything but I just have to tell you it’s so nice to see a young person in here today,” and there’s more quiet hoots and affirmations from the audience and I want to throttle this smug interloping teen with her intact family and her burly husband and her white panic. Until now I have regarded the proceedings as something of a sideshow because obviously the fucking Union is not going to get a fifty-first state and obviously California is not going to accept being split in two, not to mention part of Oregon, but Clabbers who is an actual elected official appears to be affirming everything that’s being said here.
The supervisor who called the proceedings to order leans forward into his microphone again and says, “Like I said we’re gonna do this the right way, so anyone who still wants to say anything, I really encourage you to come up to the podium. You’ll have to fill out a comment card, but you can do that after you speak—we don’t always need to follow the rules just exactly as they’re spelled out! So come on up, folks.” I have a brief insane thought that I will go up and say something about, I don’t know, my grandma and how she was in the historical society and how she ate Crab Louie and bled California gold but the impulse dies in its cradle. From the doorway between the cool dark air of the rotunda and the fluorescent buzz of the room I see the Cunt stand. I look over at Cindy and feel a little wave of almost fondness for her as she shifts in her seat and turns down the corners of her mouth with admirable economy of expression.
“Hi everyone,” the Cunt says, looking around the room like a beauty queen, flicking her braid from her front to her back. Her skin is flawless ivory. “I know a lot of you in the room already, and I’m so honored for this opportunity to address the Board of Supervisors. I’ve been working with the North State counties now for, let’s see, my whole life.” She laughs. “Five generations of my family have ranched and lived off and enjoyed and stewarded the land,” she says. She looks like she would be cool to the touch, with languid veins peeking through thin skin. “I don’t need to tell you all that the state of California has lost touch, and that the Federal Government is imposing policies on us that are actively harmful to our way of life. This is the same government that wants to tell you how to educate and take care of your children, who are your property.” I have never thought about Honey being my property, it’s such an odd way to put it. Do I feel like Honey is my property? I ask myself, and the answer comes back yes and no. The Cunt continues. “You want to talk specifics and facts and figures I’ll tell you that the Federal Government is currently in the process of taking away four good dams that are providing water for our agricultural lands in the North State by the border. These are good, clean, renewable energy dams, folks, and they’re replacing them to ‘steward Coho salmon’”—this with her long fingers forming air quotes—“that you can, this very day, buy in Whole Foods for eight ninety-five a pound. An allegedly endangered fish that the government needs to save by taking away the sources of water for families and farms. I know I’ve only got a little time here, but I want to encourage you all to watch one of my presentations on the UN Agenda 21, which is so tied up with the future of our state and our country. Not if, but when, these reforms take place, we are going to wish we took action, if we don’t take action now, while we can. And that means supporting that State of Jefferson.” She looks around again. Something is crackling in the room. “In conclusion I want to leave you with one of my favorite passages from the Bible” which, what the fuck happened to Church and State I wonder. “‘If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.’” I roll my eyes all the way back into my head. “This is our land, that we love, folks,” she says. “We’ve got to do what it takes to protect it. Thank you.” Mad applause and she waves at everyone and swishes her braid again and sits down with Cindy’s group, who put hands on her shoulders and she puts her hands on top of their hands and whispers things I can’t hear.