The Boys from Santa Cruz

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On the morning my father telephoned from Marshall City to announce that the FBI was closing in, I was in the trailer watching Teddy, my stepmother, getting dressed.

Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t there for the show. Teddy was a pre-op, post-implant trannie, built like a nose tackle with tits. But August can be brutal in the Sierras (the temperature was already ninety-two in the shade) and the trailer boasted the only air-conditioning on the property. I was fifteen, living alone in a nonair-conditioned school bus about a quarter mile up the hill from the trailer. No inside plumbing, but I had electricity and all the privacy I wanted. More important from their point of view, so did Big Luke and Teddy.

When my father called, I was sitting at the fold-down table in the kitchenette, working on my second cup of coffee. Teddy’s reverse strip show was taking place at the other end of the trailer. She’d left the bedroom door open, and came out half-dressed to answer the phone. I was only wearing shorts and sandals myself. Not wanting her to get any ideas, I pretended to be real interested in looking out through the half-open louvers at the vegetable patch behind the kitchen, where the dusty tomato stalks were slumped against their stakes like soldiers tied up in front of a firing squad.

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