You Don’t Need a
Weatherman
to Know Which Way the
Wind Blows
©2009 The Angst Guy (theangstguy@yahoo.com)
Daria and associated characters are ©2009 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
not 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” (fanfic 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, 03/16/09
FINIS