A Friend of the Earth by T. C. Boyle Page A

hands and the alien strip of concrete holding them fast at the ankles. ‘Piss on you,’ he says finally, and in a concerted move he and his companions roll back into the pickup and the engine fires up with a roar. A screech of tires and fanbelt, and then he’s reversing gears, jerking round and charging back down the road in the direction he came from. They’re left with dust. With the mosquitoes. And the sun, which has just begun to slash through the trees and make itsfirst radiant impression on their faces and hands and the flat black cotton and polyester that clothe them.
    â€˜I’m hungry. I’m tired. I want to go home.’
    His daughter is propped up on her bucket, limp as an invertebrate, and she’s trying to be brave, trying to be an adult, trying to prove she’s as capable of manning the barricades as anybody, but it isn’t working. The sun is already hot, though it’s just past ten by Tierwater’s watch, and they’ve long since shed their sweatshirts. They’ve kept the caps on, for protection against the sun, and they’ve referred to their water bags and consumed the sandwiches Andrea so providentially brought along, and what they’re doing now is waiting. Waiting for the confrontation, the climax, the reporters and TV cameras, the sheriff and his deputies. Tierwater can picture the jail cell, cool shadows playing off the walls, the sound of a flushing toilet, a cot to stretch out on. They’ll have just long enough to close their eyes, no fears, no problems, events leaping on ahead of them – bailed out before the afternoon is over, the E.F.! lawyers on alert, everything in place. Everything but the sheriff, that is. What could be keeping him?
    â€˜How much longer, Andrea? Really. Because I want to know, and don’t try to patronize me either.’
    He wants to say,
It’s all right, baby, it’ll be over soon,
but he’s not much good at comforting people, even his own daughter – Bear up, that’s his philosophy. Tough it out. Think of the Mohawk, whose captives had to laugh in the face of the knife, applaud their own systematic dismemberment, cry out in mirth as their skin came away in bloody tapering strips. He leaves it to Andrea, who coos encouragement in a voice that’s like a salve. Numbed, he watches her reach out to exchange Sierra’s vampire novel (which, under the circumstances, hasn’t proved lurid enough) for a book of crossword puzzles.
    Teo, at the opposite end of the line, is a model of stoicism. Hunched over the upended bucket like a man perched on the throne in the privacy of his own bathroom, his eyes roaming the trees for a glimpse of wildlife instead of scanning headlines in the paper, he’s utterly at home, unperturbed, perfectly willing to accept the role of martyr, if that’s what comes to him. Tierwater isn’t in his league, and he’d be the first to admit it. His feet itch, for one thing – a compelling, imperative itch that brings tears to his eyes – and the concrete, still imperceptibly hardening, has begun to chew at his ankles beneath the armor of his double socks andstiffened jeans. He has a full–blown headache too, the kind that starts behind the eyes and works its way through the cortex to the occipital lobe and back again in pulses as rhythmic and regular as waves beating against the shore. He has to urinate. Even worse, he can feel a bowel movement coming on.
    Another hour oozes by. He’s been trying to read – Bill McKibben’s
The End of Nature —
but his eyes are burning and the relentless march of dispirited rhetoric makes him suicidal. Or maybe homicidal. It’s hot. Very hot. Unseasonably hot. And though they’re all backpackers, all four of them, exposed regularly to the sun, this is something else altogether, this is like some kind of torture – like the sweat box in
The Bridge on the River Kwai —
and when he