Though even Miss Van Buren might find herself stumped by Teko himself, if not by the reasons for Yolanda’s most recent bout of alienation from her husband. For the first time in more than a year, for the first time since she and Teko abandoned their neat, white-painted, plant-filled apartment to go underground with Cin and the SLA, Yolanda yearns for the unrestricted sanctuary of normal life, open, free, and sunny. It was while she and Teko were sightseeing in her hometown, Chicago, as they traveled leisurely westward, that these feelings had first intruded. They went to the Art Institute. They went to the zoo. They sat at the edge of the sand, the elegant facades of Lakeshore Drive to their backs, the first hint of winter in the wind that traveled to them across the choppy surface of the lake. All the rigors and trials of the long summer, all the objectives they’d held fast to melted away when she sank her strong teeth into a Vienna Beef hot dog. When they walked on Addison in the shadow of Wrigley Field, quiet now that the season had drawn to another unsuccessful conclusion, Cubs buried in the cellar twenty-two games out, Yolanda realized that she would be happy to perpetuate all this, that coming home and behaving like a tourist made her feel as if all the pleasures of the city had been arranged for her comfort and delight. When Teko suggested that they take a little trip to the West Side — he had a list of public housing projects he wanted to inspect — she’ d resisted, oh so slightly, just enough to put him off until it was time to head to the Greyhound terminal. The tired sign there, yellow with cigarette smoke, still said LEAVE THE DRIVING TO US, but beneath it a man wearing a vinyl jacket and jeans dirtied to a shiny greenish brown nodded, his chin bouncing on his naked chest. This was the sort of found wit that had always delighted roving photographers for the Sun-Times. Yolanda watched him offhandedly, marveling at the spindly prison tattoos that blossomed on his neck, clutching protectively in her hand the paper bag of goodies she’d bought at the five-and-ten. She felt as distant from the man, from that victim of society, as she possibly could. She felt, even, a spark of indignation that he’d allowed himself to fall into that condition.
Then they’d arrived in Sacramento, and there were Susan and Jeff and Roger and Tania, all cozied up in the tatty little W Street apartment. Yolanda couldn’t help noticing how tidy and clean things were, how sweetly Tania kissed her hello, how thoughtful and amiable Jeff and Roger were. And then Susan had performed for them, for an evening of safe house recreation, a dramatic reading from Telephone, a San Francisco Mime Troupe skit, raising the paperbound anthology, Guerrilla Theater, to proudly declaim the piece’s final triumphant line:
… In Cuba the phones are free!
pausing ever so slightly before emphasizing, with the slightest throaty soupçon of Latin inflection, “All of them!” Yolanda was charmed, thrilled, delighted — but Teko had reverted to form and started issuing ukases the moment he walked through the door. He’d worn her out at last.
Yolanda proposed, casually, to Teko that they rent a second safe house. She explained that she had come to see that it would be very difficult to continue, politically or militarily, without first sorting out gender and authority issues. After all, no black people had turned up at their door to assume leadership of the group, and Joan, who’d refused to play follow the leader to Sacramento and was living in San Francisco, refused to formally join them; so by default it was the women of the SLA who comprised its most inherently oppressed members — not a minority class per se, she knew, but as a potential revolutionary class the most promising. Experientially, the women were leaders, deserving of a spot at the vanguard of revolutionary change. She thought it would be a good idea to establish a separate women’s collective within the SLA to address the pertinent issues.
Teko mimed turning his pockets out.
So the Bakery. Yolanda has thrown herself into the job, typing up notes, making sketches, reconnoitering the area, staying focused on the little Sacramento hideaway she imagines. Can it be that revolution has become a means, an excuse, for her to further herself? If the goal of achieving revolution, and its goals, justify and affirm her sacrifices, then it follows that her own personal fulfillment can serve the revolution. She’s convinced herself of that much.
“I won’t,” replies Yolanda. She moves as slowly as she can through the intersection, the pickup behind, honking furiously, swerving in successive vain attempts to find a path around the smaller vehicle. The guy just blows and blows his horn.
Startled pedestrians raise their heads, hunting for the commotion. Their general look says, This doesn’t happen on the quiet, well-tended streets of Sacramento.
ERNEST SPREAD HIS HANDS wide, palms up. Below them, on the bar, and centered between them was the twenty-dollar bill he had placed there, a good-faith gesture, a fresh bill distinct from the small pile of change from which the bartender had been drawing to replenish Ernest’s bourbon and water, all of which, implicitly, was now the bartender’s personal property.
No soap. “You’ve had enough, bud. You’re not going to give me a hard time now, are you?”
Slowly Ernest picked up the twenty and put it back in his wallet. He rose carefully to go to the men’s room, trying to look dignified and poised as he sauntered to the rear of the saloon. They thought this was drunk? This wasn’t drunk. This was nothing. He could show them drunk.
Heated by a stout riser, the tiny WC was warm after the drafty barroom. Ernest settled on the toilet and all at once felt sleepy. Next thing he knew, someone was rapping on the door.
“Don’t pass out in my men’s room, bud. Come on now, I don’t want to have to come in there after you.”
Ernest knew this didn’t require a verbal response. He reached above him and pulled the chain dangling from the tank, felt the breeze on his ass, and then stood, wet his hands, rubbed the sleepers out of his eyes, and emerged. The bartender was back behind the bar. Two of six patrons who’d been scattered throughout the place had departed. His cigarettes and Zippo were where he’d left them. The pile of change remained untouched. Ernest took his coat from the rack near the door and shrugged himself into it, eyes on the high ceiling, the elegant woodwork climbing toward it, the stained glass over the archway that led into what had once been a rear dining room. Gilded Age refinement, on a miniature scale. Plenty of places like this remaining in Scranton, abandoned to their ruin once all the money had taken a powder. Ghosts. The bartender wore a flannel shirt and drew Pabst and Schmidt’s from the taps, working-class beers for his working-class clientele. Ernest imagined that not all that long ago the man walking the duckboards would have been in an evening jacket, with bow tie. Not that this was a bad guy. He had a feeling for bartenders. He decided to give it one more shot.
“Hear the one about the drunk sleeping with his head on the bar? Bartender comes up, goes, ‘Buddy, you gotta get lost. You can’t sleep here, and you’ve had enough to drink.’ So the drunk sits up, thinks for a minute, then says, ‘Well, how about a haircut?’”
The bartender laughed, polishing the space in front of him with a rag.
“Come on, one for the road? It’s cold as a witch’s tit.”
“Not that cold.”