Red, White, and Dead
by
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Corine Jacobs never once thought her birds looked like frogs. Even when she first put on and modeled the bikini bottom in the seclusion of the women’s changing-room at the downtown Boise Bon, the diminutive white designs wheeling about the soft turns of her hips appeared to Corine as a cloud of busy little gulls. The designs against the green material hugging her own nakedness created a "nature" look, she decided, swiveling her butt around so she could see three moving images of herself in the full-length mirrors. But something odd about the way their tiny feet dangled underneath the wings on the thin fabric made the salesgirl from "Swim Wear" bend over, her own blonde hair hanging loose, and say into the mirror, "Frogs would make my skin crawl." So while her Visa card booted up the sale for the swimming outfit on the computer, Corine felt compelled to explain to the booby salesgirl about the birds, about wanting to wear something in the Jacuzzi that reminded her, you know, of nature, thinking all the time, "Bitch!"
So now that she had snugged the scanty bra over her breasts and was on the point of wearing the birds in public, Corine felt less cocky. She loved the birds, but she wondered if there was maybe too much open territory between the ones skimming about her breasts and those flocking around her hips. Of course, this wasn’t terribly public yet right here in the locker room at the Park Center Health Club, she reminded herself. Only one other woman who was changing into athletic shorts in the cubicle next to hers and humming along to some tune in her own head could notice her, but Corine thought that once she was near the pool downstairs she might be leered at by male bathers. Though her figure was not what people called "voluptuous," she was slender in an elegant way, and the new bikini bra noticeably dramatized her cleavage. She liked keeping in shape and worked out in the weight room before the wide mirrors, though it bothered her when she caught men studying her image. Not that she shrank from the idea of being thought "sexy;" it just struck her as being somehow dangerous and not to be encouraged. The male gaze was awfully greedy, she thought.
Corine swept her swimming goggles, a Stephen King paperback, her wallet and her keys into an athletic bag with a sticker on the side that said "Elvis is Jesus Spelled Backward" and fitted her feet into thongs. She tossed one towel into the locker, closed the metal doors, and gathered up her extra towel.
"Dodge City, here I come," she said, and exchanged a wave with the Karaoke Kid next door.
Downstairs the surface of the swimming pool was glassy calm, reflecting the morning sunlight coming through broad windows, which made Corine smile. As she walked the smooth edge of the pool, avoiding the nubby surface of the walkway, she could see down to the green tiles on the bottom marking the swimming lanes and she was careful in her awkward thongs, the white towel draped around her shoulders, and she registered that the waters of the Jacuzzi were also calm and the Saunas appeared empty of people. Today was her Friday off from work, and she needed this chance to break in the new bikini without an audience. This quiet time before the swarming luncheon crowds was a lucky break for her.
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About the Book
The newly reverend Roy Sweetner, once a rockabilly guitar picker, now a born-again minister to a fundamentalist church in Boise, is found murdered in the sanctuary of his church. Though local cops show faint interest in the case, it’s when a Boise private investigator, an ex-Texan, Clayton James, stumbles onto the murder that unsavory goings-on in Sweetner’s life come to light, linking him to a society of white supremacists. Snooping the dead man’s apartment, James finds evidence of the minister’s obsession with racist culture.
Provided muscle by his older brother, Joyce, a one-time wrestler and carnival bouncer, James sets out to unravel the threads of Brother Sweetner’s spiritual quest, his trip into super-patriotism, and his descent into the dangerous world of white racism. Another perplexing mystery for James is Corine Jacobs, a Seattle ex-pat who’s arrived to rescue her brother, a punk in tatters and studs, who follows the reverend, talking trash music and anarchy. James just has time to wonder if he’s a patsy for a woman, when he bumps against the uglies.
Red, White, and Dead, sometimes comic, sometimes crude, follows the James boys, exploring in fiction the disgrace of bigotry that has until recently embarrassed the reputation of Idaho.
About the Author
Lonnie L. Willis was raised on Texas ranch land. Country schools introduced him to a hardscrabble education, followed by mature aging with the 11th Armored Cavalry. He earned graduate degrees at the University of Texas in Austin and the University of Colorado, followed by a career as Professor of English and American literature and cinema studies at Boise State University. He has published short fiction, as well as scholarly articles on American writers as diverse as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry David Thoreau, and Robert B. Parker. He has lived for periods in Britain, and traveled in Europe, China, Africa, and Vietnam. At present he is writing a memoir about free-for-all boyhood in Texas, Only the Sky Never Changes, and lives with his wife, Carol Martin, in Boise, Idaho. Rock music is another passion.