Pensioners' Posse

he streets of Waterfall Falls were as wide as they had been in

the days cattle thundered through. Natural Woman Foods was the last business at the south end of town, and the last with a roofed sidewalk. When she'd first seen the store, she knew it was the one she wanted if for no other reason than that wooden false front. This was the Wild West whose images she'd grown up with, and it fed some hunger in her for adventure. No matter how strung out she was from this persistent depression on any particular day, Chick never stopped being enchanted by her lonesome outpost. On days like this one, with wetness from the last rain shower sparkling in the pine branches to the south of the store, she felt like the luckiest woman on earth.

She moved from the window to the little nook of the store that made so many of the townspeople curious and a little nervous. Here she sold crystals and amethysts, unscented candles, and mother-earth necklaces. Here were the healing books, the We'Moon calendars and the chakra charts, the anthologies of women's spirituality, and the herb bags which at times brought her so much comfort, and which some of the older customers bought as sachets. Rattlesnake came in for bundles of sage and complained that Chick abused them by storing them in plastic. Chick laughed and said even the Goddess would sneeze at their smell. This was not merely a display of New Age sidelines; it was her altar at work.

The altar she'd made upstairs, on the secondhand oak hutch Donny had secretly refinished and given her one Christmas, was more personal. There were pictures of Donny, of Donny and herself, of the bluegrass band in Village People costume, and of Blackberry Mountain with a bonnet of snow. The store altar did in a pinch, and she'd already dusted in there twice today.

Despite facing the shelves, bagging the day-old baked goods, making up dozens of packages of seeds and nuts, waiting on customers, and making half a dozen pots of coffee before ten o'clock, it wasn't until Clara and Hector White arrived in their rusted pickup that Chick discovered what a truly sorry state she was in. Clara barged inside with Hector limping several feet behind. Would she and Donny look like that in twenty-five or thirty years? Chick careened toward them, arms out, thirsty for hugs and suddenly enveloped in the mugginess of a hot flash.

"Twenty-three years since that old branch snapped back at me, and I still feel her right here," said Hector, rubbing his arthritic hip. He hugged her, then held her at arm's length. His fuzzy white hair was bunched like a clown's around the base of his Ford cap. She could see the top of his long underwear shirt where his collar opened. "You look like the rain's getting to you too."

"You know she loves the rain," snapped Clara.

Chick settled them into seats, pouring coffee with an unsteady hand. "It's him again. That sleazeball M.C."

Hector said, "Forgive an old man his memory, but this guy was what, family? A friend?"

"Just a creepy guy who was part of the crowd I hung with."

"Lordy, lordy, doesn't that fool know you can't stand the sight of him?" Clara asked as she patted dry her face and the white hair that escaped the frayed oversized men's handkerchief she used for a kerchief.

"He's wanted to baptize me a born-again straight person since my Chicago days."

Hector looked puzzled.

"Get me into bed," Chick explained. "Just saying it turns my stomach." She left out the part about fooling around with Pennylane. "M.C. chased every woman that passed in the street, but Pennylane was the only one he called his old lady. He used to tell the story that he'd fallen in love with me when I smashed a cop in the nose so hard all eight of us were able to bolt from the paddy wagon. M.C. included."

"I hope he doesn't have the arthritis in his nose," said Hector. "I hope he still has a nose after you got through with him. That was the time you kids got caught smoking funny stuff in the park?"

"It wasn't toking that got us in trouble, it was M.C. dealing to an undercover."

Clara looked up from folding the handkerchief and said, "Why didn't you run and let him take what was coming to him, the dirty dope pusher? Not that I think you ought to have got away with what you were doing either, but at least you weren't getting schoolchildren hooked on dope."

"They took us by surprise. The cops were doing a sweep. One word on the undercover's walkie-talkie and the uniforms were on top of us, their wagon right behind them. We lucked out when another something happened across the lake and they left those two poor drivers to take care of all of us."

"What did you do," Hector asked. "Hog-tie them?"

"Too bad we didn't have you there to show us how," Chick said with a laugh. "We didn't have to. Eight longhairs, eight directions, dozens more freaks in the park that day-by the time the cop up front in the driver's seat realized his partner was in trouble, we were scattered in the fog. M.C. even managed to grab his stash back."

"Men," Clara speared at Hector, though they'd been married fifty-two years.

Clara had said the same thing, like a call to battle, that day a week or so ago, when the pension posse went up the mountain to talk sense to M.C.

Hector had told her, "M.C. was our original ratty-haired redneck hippie. There were a bunch of them that moved into the hills from the cities, addle-brained from dope. The fool still booby-traps his land and greets folks with a shotgun. You wouldn't catch him in town till lately. Always sent his faded-looking worn-out hippie wife, that black-headed woman I understand is her sister, and their vanload of ragamuffins."

Chick sat down as she did now, smoothing her voluminous skirt around her, holding her crystal pendant with all the fingers of her right hand. It had dawned on her one day as she held her crystal that the reappearance of depression in her life, the worst since her teens, might have something to do with approaching menopause. Life was such a trip. Because she'd rejected M.C. when she'd been wild with the hormones that had probably attracted him, he was avenging himself as those hormones disappeared.

She'd told them, "I never would have planted myself here if I'd known M.C. was up on Mule Butte."

Clara had patted her hand. "What's M.C. stand for anyway? Mr. Cuckoo?"

Chick's gurgling laugh had escaped, but ended in a shudder. "No. It stood for Mission Control. You went to ol' M.C. for liftoff."

"A dope code," Clara said, punching the air with her index finger. "Didn't I tell you, Pa?"

"What brought him down to make trouble?" Hector wanted to know. "He's the one got the town to put up that sign: 'Patrolled by the Waterfall Posse. Persons breaking our laws will be remanded to the authorities.' Horsefeathers."

Chick hugged herself. "I'm afraid Donny will turn vigilante too if I tell her he's bothering me, but she knows something's happening." Donny's temper was scary. Not because Donny would ever hurt her, but Chick feared she would get into such big trouble while in a rage they'd have to leave Waterfall.

"How'd he spook you this time?"

She'd been shivering as she'd answered. "He said he was in charge of pushing snacks at the basketball game that night and wanted to show them what a moneymaker it could be. We worked out a discount and he said if they made this a regular thing, I'd be pulling in gold, not only with the basketball sales, but with all the parents who'd come into the store once they knew how out-of-sight the munchies were-he still speaks in hippie. Then he had me wrap all the baked goods, while he scooped pounds and pounds of bulk foods into bags. 'For my brood,' he said. I caught on when he gave this evil laugh. 'April Fool's, babe!'"

She covered her face with her hands. "I went for it. I still haven't got it all put back. I feel like I'm being stalked!"

"There you go," Hector had said solemnly, drawing her be-ringed, braceleted hands into his big sandpapery ones. "You called it right. That's exactly what's going on."

"Don't give her the heebie-jeebies, you jackass," Clara scolded.

He'd floundered. "It seems to me that if a person was to get to know you, like we did, then it doesn't matter that you're, uh, different. You're a nice gal and you-"

Clara butted in as if to forestall some passionate declaration. "- don't deserve this."

"Hey, this will cheer you up" said Hector. "What's green and lives outside?"

"This is no time for one of your riddles, you old fool."

"Patty O'Furniture!"

Chick had given him a weak smile in response. How many times had she come right up to the edge of telling Hector and Clara how homophobic they could be? Why couldn't he say gay? But she loved them for being so naively well-meaning. "Nobody deserves hang-up calls, screaming drive-by insults, notes under the door. One day he threatens to steal me, the next, to kill me. He gets me so off balance, I can't keep my mind from imagining what he'll pull next."

"With you woolgathering all the time, Donny must wonder if there's someone else." Clara shoved her uppers in place with her thumb, eyes on Chick and Hector's still-clasped hands. "I would."

Chick had drawn her hands from Hector's and went back to worrying her crystal. Of course she flirted with Hector; that was her way. With a sudden flush she remembered she'd even flirted with crazed M.C. way back when. Why had she even associated with slime like M.C.? She'd done some stupid things in her San Francisco years to surround herself with people and stop her terminal aloneness.

She'd lamented, "Twenty-five years ago M.C. didn't seem so much evil as wacko. Crazy was cool."

"There's something wrong with a man who acts the way Mr. Cuckoo does," said Clara with ardor. "You always see the best in people. That man's caught you on your blind side."

Soon afterwards, the first of their cronies had arrived.

"Malcolm," called Hector, "Got one for you!" Malcolm waved him off, but Hector went right on. "What's the difference between a mouse and a beautiful girl?"

"You want me to tell you in front of the ladies?" Malcolm said, elbowing him.

"The mouse harms the cheese, and the girl charms the he's!"

"Good one!"

It was a Tuesday, senior discount day, and sunny off and on so there were a slew of customers. If this kept up, they'd have to hire someone to help her as Tuesday was usually Donny's day up in Greenhill, getting their town supplies. Hector and Clara had discovered Natural Woman Foods first, and gradually, over a year or two, their whole crowd followed. To this day they acted as tour guides, proudly proprietary, unnecessarily parlaying questions back and forth between their friends and Chick. They were shouting interpreters, as if they were the only ones not hard of hearing. That day, even the old folks' cheery greetings failed to spike Chick's adrenaline.

Clara, like a hummingbird in a garden, had gone from a couple to a widower to two spinster farmers Chick hadn't been able to draw out. Maybe they really were sisters. As more seniors arrived, they were greeted with whispers.

Hector came over and talked about the antics of his brand-new foal, and Chick had forced herself to respond because she knew her laugh tickled these customers. She'd noticed that the baked goods she'd so carefully wrapped and unwrapped hadn't been snapped up by the usual sweet tooths. The ever-popular wheat bran and prunes lay in their bins untouched.

Several minutes later, Clara had briskly borne down on the checkout counter and announced, "There's nineteen of us here today." Slowly, the others had congregated behind her. "And plenty more where we come from. We'll be visiting Mr. Cuckoo tomorrow bright and early. Let's see if we can't step on his corns."

"You mean about-"

"The stalking," Hector supplied. "Some of these folks are in the church he's started going to."

"Church! What a hypocrite!"

"Be careful," advised a small woman who'd nodded at mention of the church. "He may be planning a hairy Christna coup like that guru who took over the town in Oregon."

"A Baptist coup?" Hector had whispered to Chick. "They'd have to have too many fund-raisers to pull that off."

She'd laughed genuinely then. The local Baptist Church was forever coming by to request a donation for one project or another, assuming that Chick and Donny were as anti-gay as their congregation. These people were serious about confronting M.C., though. "What in the world will you say to him?"

A man on a walker had informed her, "Never you mind what we'll say. The fella's getting too big for his britches altogether, and the Pensioners' Posse is going to cut him down to size on a whole passel of matters."

"I'd love to be a fly on the wall," she'd said. Donny had made their side door accessible, particularly for this fellow and the lady in the wheelchair who sometimes came in.

"You stay right here, young woman," Clara commanded. "He won't know you've had a thing to do with this. We aren't trying to make it worse for you."

There were many confirmations of this and pats on the arm or shoulder as the Pensioners' Posse hotfooted it to the aisles, piling the goods they'd been neglecting on the counter. Hector came behind the counter and bagged the groceries beside her to handle the rush. Chick made transactions as fast as she could with her eyes so misted up she could barely see. She'd come to love her senior customers.

When her pickup truck cavalry had gone back into the hills to recruit more to its indignant army, she finally finished cleaning up M.C.'s mess. Donny came home an hour later with sacks of potatoes grown by a local organic farmer. In the back room, Chick had ravished her with a lusty kiss born of feeling a little bit safer because all those people cared.

"Is my lady really back?" Chick very specifically remembered Donny asking. She'd felt as if she might have returned from the land of fear. Since then there had been no sign of M.C. Still, she felt most comfortable when someone else was in the store with her. This morning, she was trying to keep Clara and Hector as long as she could.

"Men," Clara said again. "They don't have the sense they were born with." She went back out to their car for the shopping list Hector forgot.

"What made you decide to marry Clara?" she asked him, watching Clara stride across the sidewalk and yank open the truck's heavy door.

"Oh, I liked my drill sergeant in the war too," he admitted with a laugh. "A sharp tongue strengthens character." He looked at the floor and became serious. "That old lady's been a fine helpmate, a hard, thrifty worker. It's not every woman that will take a man who can't have kids, you know. Something happened to me in the war that makes your Agent Orange look like a Kool-Aid attack."

"But you have kids."

"When we first started spending time together I told her what the Army doctors told me in the hospital, that it wasn't going to happen. Eight years after we married it did happen. I didn't know whether to accuse her of fooling around with the milkman or to declare a national holiday. I doubted it was the milkman, though. Clara and me aren't exactly the best lookers in town. When our boy started to shape up into something halfway human he looked a lot like me."

"He was born bald with a baseball cap?"

Hector grinned his gap-toothed grin. "That was the good news. He was fuzzy-headed, and you could drive a Mack truck between his front teeth, too."

Clara returned and scribbled something on her list with the stub of a pencil. "Is this the first time Mister Cuckoo's been back since we talked to him?" she asked.

Chick smiled at the nickname. She'd been calling him that to herself and found it took a little bit of the demon out of the man. "He

hasn't even called and hung up on me."

"Was he doing that too?"

"I assume it's M.C. I don't seem to drive anyone else up a wall like I do him. What went down?"

"We gave him what for," Clara said. "Told him he was abusing his authority in the vigilante group if he thought he could go around town bothering young ladies."

"Far out," Chick said, amazed at their chutzpah. "You are beautiful people."

Hector grumbled, "Sounds like we need to do it again."

"We were too darned nice. I told you that, mister."

Hector ignored Clara. "We elected Malcolm to do the talking. He's a retired union leader."

"The man on the walker?"

"That's the one. He appreciated M.C.'s community involvement half to death-"

"Nearly turned my stomach," said Clara.

"-and then told him about some others we appreciate, including you."

"You may think we're old and decrepit, Malcolm says, but we stick together. Malcolm said you, for example, were like one of our kids, and we'd take care of you like one of our own."

"Meantime," Clara said, "me and a couple of the ladies kind of wandered off, seeing what we could see, but M.C. started on his own little speech about respecting privacy. We had to pretend we were too feeble to stand there and went back to our cars. Didn't see a thing except for all the old trailers and shacks he's got spread around the place. And his kids weren't anywhere near school, at least not any of the older ones. How many does he have?"

"I haven't got a clue."

"Too many," decided Clara. "He could have his own little dope farm up there with all that help."

"Probably does," Hector agreed. "I could see cleared spaces in the forest. I doubt they're corn patches."

"You're mind-blowing. I don't know how to thank you."

"Don't be ridiculous!" chided Clara. "This is our town, not some nasty character's territory."

Hector said, "It's our way of thanking you."

"Until today, I've been more calm this week than I've been in a long time."

"You leave this to us."

For a moment Chick believed they were that powerful, like a kid who still thought her parents had super powers. She half-hugged, half-clung to both of them at once. Slowly, she remembered that her protectors were a couple of eighty-odd-year-olds who planned to move into the retirement housing across the freeway in a few years. They were a lot more likely, as her mother had been, to need caretaking than to be able to take care of her. If only she could rely on Donny to help her fight off M.C. without ruining everything by losing her temper.

The thought scared her and she fought a downpour of despair. She didn't live alone and naked on a rocky mountaintop crag, but Goddess help her, that's how she felt.

CHAPTER TEN