You Don’t Need a
Weatherman
to Know Which Way THE
Wind Blows
©2007 The Angst Guy (theangstguy@yahoo.com)
Daria and associated characters are ©2007 MTV Networks
Feedback (good, bad, indifferent, just want to bother me, whatever) is appreciated. Please write to: theangstguy@yahoo.com
Synopsis: A terrible secret from the past catches up with a former hippie radical, engulfing her family, her job, and the rest of her life.
Author’s Notes: At the end of January 2007, Bliss Ticks proposed a PPMB Iron Chef as follows: “Write a story where Helen is homeless. It can be in her past, future, with her family, without them...whatever. Only one condition: The story cannot end with her ‘getting a home’- it's just too obvious. Flashback stories are permitted, however.” My contribution is here.
Acknowledgements: Bliss Ticks has my gratitude for his clever challenge that gave this tale life.
*
“Hey, um . . . ma’am?”
The gray-haired woman with her hands jammed into the pockets of her dirty overcoat turned around. The younger, dark-haired social worker motioned her over to the doorway of the dingy multipurpose room of the homeless shelter. A used-car commercial blared from the TV.
“I hate to bother you, but we’re short-handed back in the kitchen,” said the social worker. “Could give me hand with dishes, please? I’ll make it worth your time.”
The gray-haired woman bit her lower lip as she considered the offer. Her bright blue eyes had a touch of genuine fear in them.
The social worker glanced behind the woman at the two scruffy winos watching the tube, then lowered her voice. “You can stay over in a staff room if you do. We’ve got a spare. It’s a lot safer here than being out there. Warmer, too, probably.”
The older woman looked down at the floor, thought some more, then gave in. “Okay,” she whispered, shoulder slumping. She seemed exhausted. “Thank you.”
“No problem. I should be thanking you, though.” The social worker waved her to follow. “Back this way. Come on.”
They wound their way through a dark hallway to the shelter kitchen. The shelter had once been a church, and the kitchen had once fed parishioners. The old woman’s coat went on a hook behind the kitchen door. She wore a baggy bray-brown sweater with a hole under one arm, Army fatigue pants, old boots. When she pulled off her black woolen gloves—
“Ah!” Shocked at what she saw, the social worker started to reach for the old woman’s hands. “Ohmigod! Are you all right?”
The hands were gone in an instant, stuck deep in huge pants pockets. The older woman flinched in pain.
“I’m sorry!” said the social worker. “I just wanted to know if you were all right. I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to. Does that hurt?”
The woman shook her head no.
“Did you burn your fingers?”
No response except a tightening of the lips.
“Well, you can’t put those bandages in water. I have some big rubber gloves. Can you put your hands in warm water that way?”
After a beat, the woman nodded yes.
“Well, if you’re sure it’s okay. There’s the sink. Wait, here’s the gloves. Put these on, see if they fit. The detergent’s right there. Sorry we have so many dishes, but at least they’re plastic. Doesn’t matter if you drop one. I have to clean out the oven. Wish it was self-cleaning, but you know how tight budgets are lately. D’oh!” The social worker slapped herself on the forehead. “My name’s Katie! What’s yours?”
The old woman swallowed, her gray eyes focused on the linoleum floor. “H- . . . Linda.” She looked up. Her voice was soft. “It’s Linda.”
“Linda, great!” Katie reached out to shake hands, then remembered and jerked her hand back in embarrassment. “Sorry! I forgot about . . . well, forget that. Thanks so much for helping out. Do you mind if I talk? Makes the time go by faster.”
Linda shrugged and glanced at the open kitchen door. Down the hall in the multipurpose room, a late afternoon comedy show was starting on TV, a rerun.
“You want me to turn on the TV in here while you work? I can turn this little one on. Wish we could get cable here, but we need the money for more important things.”
“No,” whispered Linda, turning on the sink’s hot water.
“Fine with me. Wish they’d turn down that set in the MPR. Annoying.”
Out in the multipurpose room, someone changed the channel.
—sports, and weather. Channel Thirteen’s Action News at six!
“Well,” said Katie with a sigh, “looks like we’re gonna get the news whether we want it or not.”
Linda picked up the rubber gloves and slowly pulled them on over her scarred, bandaged fingers. She gritted her teeth as she did.
Our top story tonight: The largest manhunt
in recent history is in its second day within a two-hundred mile radius of the
“Oh, man!” exclaimed Katie, on her knees in front of the open oven. “She was a lawyer?”
—is being sought in
connection with the discovery of a body buried under a house near
“Have you heard about that?” asked Katie, leaning into the oven. “Pretty wild, isn’t it? It’s been on all the TV stations and the papers. Man, some people, I tell you.”
—is thought to have once
belonged to the SDS, the Students for a Democratic Society, a radical leftist
group that opposed the Vietnam War and sought the overthrow of the government
of the
Caught in the dragnet yesterday were
Helen Morgendorffer’s husband, Jake, who worked in Lawndale as a business
consultant, Earl Yeager, of Phoenix, Arizona, who went by the nickname Coyote,
and Earl’s wife Willow Yeager, formerly Willow Shelby. All four are in their
early fifties. The FBI announced tonight that it is placing Helen Morgendorffer
on its list of the ten most wanted fugitives. Helen is five foot seven,
approximately one hundred thirty-five pounds, with short brunette hair and
brown eyes. She was last seen leaving home for her workplace yesterday morning.
Her nineteen ninety-seven Ford Explorer, seen here, was discovered in an alley
in south
“Jeez Louise!” grumbled Katie, rubbing her runny nose on her sleeve. “This oven cleaner stinks to high heaven. Whew! You doing okay over there? Good. You’re coming along great with those. Keeps your hands warm, doesn’t it? I like doing dishes in cold weather. You sure your hands are okay? Okay, just checking.”
—records indicate that Helen and her then boyfriend
Jake were arrested for assaulting a police officer on August ninth, nineteen sixty-nine, and were jailed for one night before
being released. An unnamed source in the Boulder police department said that
the police at the time did not believe the couple posed a serious public
threat, noting in the records that Helen, who allegedly punched the officer
during a traffic stop, was drunk, and she apologized for the incident. The
couple was not charged. The undercover agent, whose name has not yet been released,
was reported missing shortly after Helen Barksdale and Jake Morgendorffer left
the area, but they were never connected with the agent’s disappearance.
Helen and Jake Morgendorffer have
two adult daughters, both of whom are reported to be college students. They are
in police custody for questioning, one in
In other news, President Bush said today that—
Katie got
to her feet, waving at her face. “Can’t take anymore of that stuff. I’ll finish
later. Whoa! How’d you ever get done with those dishes so fast? You must’ve
worked in a restaurant. Not gonna say, huh? That’s okay. I got a lot of stuff
in my past I hate talking about, too. My ex-husband Wind, for one. I used to
have a houseboat, can you believe that? Had it docked in
Linda shook her head as she carefully peeled off the rubber gloves.
“Don’t mean to be nosy,” said Katie. She wiped her nose. “I can’t stand that oven cleaner.”
“I’ll do it,” Linda whispered.
“Nah, I can’t have you do it. Your hands are—”
“Please.” Linda took a shuddering breath. “I have nowhere else to go.”
Katie groaned and wiped her forehead with her sleeve. “Oh, man, I’ve love to have you stay, but that room’s going to go to another social worker who’s coming tomorrow. Tell you what, though. We can give you food here and maybe some extra stuff for your help. These young gangstas, they don’t want to help with anything. They act like this is their mom’s place or something. If you can help us out here and there, I’ll see what I can do. I can’t promise you anything. This can’t be like your home or anything, but once in a while maybe you can stay over. Where do you stay now?”
Linda spread her injured hands. “Nowhere,” she whispered.
“Jeez. I’d say the old Y, but that’s pretty bad. Have you been to the Y already? It’s not really a Y anymore, and it’s safe at all. I gotta think. Let me call some people.”
“No.” Linda dropped her hands. “I’ll go.”
“Well, stay the night at least, all right? It’s already late. Stay on one night, all right? It’s not safe out there.”
Linda nodded, the movement of her head barely visible.
“All right, good. Come on, get your coat and let me show you where it is.”
It was a very small room in the shelter’s musty basement, with a small table, a wobbly kiddie chair, and a bed with a plastic mattress cover full of holes, a stained sheet, and two worn-out Army surplus blankets dating from just after the Vietnam War. The window was painted over. The heater did not work. The pipes in the ceiling made noise when anyone in the shelter flushed a toilet or ran water in a sink. It was as cold as a Martian icecap, and warm breath created clouds in the air under the dim overhead light bulb.
“Thank you,” whispered Linda, her face working. “Thank you so much.”
“Eh, well, it’s not much.” Katie cleared her throat, afraid she might cry and hoping she didn’t. The old woman didn’t seem like a regular crazy street person. She must have really hit some bad times. It was just plain sad, that’s what it was. “Kinda early to turn in, but you earned it. See you in the morning for breakfast. I’ll see what I can do if you want to stay on longer.”
“Thank you.”
When the door was closed, Linda leaned forward and rested her head against it, eyes closed. After a few moments, tears ran down her cheeks and fell to the concrete floor. She wept for half an hour and never once made a sound.
Later she planned to check her big coat pockets for the small bottle of gray hair dye, the solution for her blue contacts, the lozenges that roughened her voice. She planned to check her fingertips to make sure the acid had eaten away the whorls and ridges so she would never leave fingerprints. And she planned to leave before dawn and move on to another shelter to get breakfast, and then another for dinner, and then move on to another city for a day or two, and then another city, and then another and another and another and another and another and another forever and ever, running and running and running and running without end, until the day she felt a hand grasp her shoulder—
Now, though, she remembered the strange feel of a gun in her hand, the stink of burnt gunpowder, the drugged fog that could not block out the screams of those around her. She remembered the unthinking panic, the ruined plans for revolution, the burials and the drive back to college that took forever. She remembered the years of forgetting, moving around the country, getting married and having children and raising them, studying law because she was so afraid she would have to use her knowledge to defend herself in court or get herself out of prison. And she remembered finally daring to think it was all behind her, thinking she was free at last, that the ghosts were truly buried far, far away, and then she got the phone call from Jake, as the police were pulling up outside his office. . . .
The song
came back as it always did. She sniffed back her tears and heard the song in
her mind, fresh and clear and funny and true as when she and Jake and
She pulled away from the door and wiped her eyes on her sweater sleeve. Her fingers ached, her feet ached, her bones ached, everything inside her ached, but nothing ached so much as her heart. She forgot all that she had planned to do. She pulled on her overcoat, lay down on the cold bed on top of the blankets, and closed her eyes. Before long, she began to dream of home.
*
Author’s Notes II:
This tale was based on the life of Kathleen Soliah, a former member of the
Symbionese Liberation Army, who was on the run from the early 1970s until 1999,
when she was captured while living under an assumed name (married and with
children). Helen Morgendorffer and company are assumed here to have briefly
been part of the Weathermen. The song Helen (“Linda,” as in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbionese_Liberation_Army
Kathleen Soliah’s story
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Soliah
The Weathermen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weatherman_%28organization%29
“Subterranean Homesick Blues” and its place
in 1960s counterculture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subterranean_Homesick_Blues
Lyrics to “Subterranean Homesick Blues”
(story has modified version)
http://bobdylan.com/songs/subterranean.html
“Jane and the Lanes”
http://www.theangstguy.com/fanfics/janeandthelanes.htm
“Lane Miserables” (script)
http://www.outpost-daria.com/ts_ep308.html
“Art Burn” (script)
http://www.outpost-daria.com/ts_ep507.html
Original: 02/02/07, modified 02/09/07
FINIS