ROBIN WILSON

THE RETIRED MEN'S SOCIAL CLUB & LADIES' AUXILIARY

People had called Edward Jay Elson "Pop" ever since 1952, when at twenty-eight
he was promoted from journeyman lineman to pusher on the 300 KVA line they were
stringing down the Feather River Canyon from the new Caribou hydro station. Now
newly into his seventies, a tall, lean man whose shock of white hair and
weathered face at last suited the nickname, he continued to display the good
nature that had earned it. He was "Pop" because of his paternal care for the men
who worked for him as he rose through the blue collar ranks in Pacific Gas and
Electric; a nice guy who had paid his way in the world with quiet, unassuming
kindness.

Which, he supposed -- being a man of self-knowledge but limited religious
conviction -- made it a balancing of scales according to some vast eternal plan,
that he be rewarded for a life of modest good works with the sudden removal of
the cancerous tumor that had grown long undetected in the dark of his groin like
some mysterious truffle.

Whatever the ultimate cause -- God or Nature or simply The Way Things Are -- the
proximate instrument of his sudden return to health was a small, golden cylinder
held with sure purpose in the six-fingered left hand of one of the three little
guys with bald and bulbous heads and luminous kid eyes who, late on a March
Saturday afternoon, sucked him up from his Sears aluminum bass boat into their
strange, organic craft, one toroidal end of which hovered briefly over a snaky
little inlet of Lake Oroville.

"Thing like one of those little Magna-Lite flashlights," he told Amie Heckshire
at nine-thirty on the following Saturday morning in the storefront clubroom on
Third Street in Oroville's shabby old downtown. "Except it was kind a gold
colored and hummed." The ancient Wurlitzer in the comer writhed purple and
played a mournful Crystal Gayle.

"Yeah, right," said Arnie, a friend of fifty years and fellow member of the
Retired Men's Social Club & Ladies' Auxiliary. He was not a morning person,
hated Saturday clean ups. He shrugged his narrow shoulders and tugged the belt
on his Expansoslacks up over his prolapsed abdomen, "Okay, I'll bite. What's the
gag?"

"I'm not kiddin'. It really happened." Pop's voice was low, intense, his face
serious. He pulled the front of his blue polo shirt free from his pants,
unbuckled them, and slipped the waistband down over a pelvis still flat and hard
to reveal in the dim morning light of the barroom a small, pink, puckering
blemish.

"Shit," said Arnie, shaking his head to scoff away his growing credulity. "Looks
like a goddamn hickey, like where maybe Marianne bit you, you been doin' that
kind a thing lately." If Pop's tale was even partly true, Arnie was hurt that
Pop hadn't confided his affliction.

Pop accepted Arnie's sour skepticism. It was certainly justifiable. He shrugged,
tucked in his shirt, and began to fill the sink behind the bar with hot water.

After half a century of conversation, Arnie was pretty sure he knew truth from
trash when it came from Pop. But disbelief is a faith slow to die. He said
almost nothing for the next two hours as the two went about their chores in the
club's help-yourself bar, now illuminated only by one bare ceiling bulb, the
Wurlitzer working its way through its stack on automatic, and a gleam of morning
sun coming in above the cracked black paint on the street-side display windows.

The club was the social focus for a few dozen elderly people of modest means who
wanted a place away from the TV set to talk about the sins of their kids, the
virtues of their grandchildren, the follies of those sonsabitches in Washington,
and their discomfort with change, any kind of change. They could play a little
penny-ante or gin and drink a couple of unlicensed beers at lower than barroom
prices. They knew they had a uniquely good thing going but all was contingent on
the benign neglect of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board and a system of
grumbling volunteers. There were no paid employees.

And so in teams of two, the members took turns tending bar, cleaning up the
place, buying and storing stock, and seeing to rent and maintenance. This week
it was Pop and Arnie's turn to share the morning clean-up after a busy Friday
night. They washed the glassware, swept up the litter left by the forty-five
club members and their friends and relatives, including auxiliaries, cased the
empties, wiped down the two dozen battered tables, and restocked the cooler.

Finished half an hour before the next duo would arrive to open the club for the
day, they sat on adjoining bar stools -- an elderly Mutt and Jeff-- to have a
first beer. Arnie took a long pull on his bottle of Anchor Steam to wash down
Pop's story, and broke his long silence: "Jeez, Pop. You aren't kiddin' are
you."

"Nope." Pop expected skepticism, could himself hardly believe what had happened
was not just an old man's dream. But there was the scar and the featureless
X-ray on Monday at the clinic, and the guys in the white coats with stethoscopes
around their necks shaking their heads and muttering stuff about must be some
mistake, wrong file.

"So," said Arnie. "Din it hurt?

"Nah. They kept their thumbs outta the way."

"Shit. Don't joke me, man. I mean you!"

Pop shook his head. "Nothin'. No blood, no pain. Like you can see, not hardly
any scar. And no friggin' bill!"

"Medicare covered it, hey?"

"No! I mean there was no charge. They done it for free, only asked me to, you
know, kinda pass the word."

This last was too much for Arnie. He took another long pull on his beer. "You
mean they want to do more -- uh -- operations?"

"What they said."

"Want you to find 'em more people need something taken out?"

"Guess so."

"And you're telling me all this. . . ?"

Pop drained his bottle, head thrown back, Adam's apple bobbing. Empty back on
the old galvanized sheet metal bar with a solid clunk. "Ah," he said. "Yeah. I'm
telling you most of all 'cause you aren't worth a cup fulla cold piss but you're
about the oldest and best friend I got and, basically, who else is gonna believe
something as fuckin' weird as this? And second I know you got that prostate
thing worries you and . . ." He paused to find an afterthought that would mask
emotion. ". . . hell, I promised those guys that were in, you know, in that
thing over the lake, that I'd find other customers for 'em."

Arnie was deeply touched by Pop's concern for him, but he would not show it. He
said, "Hah! Customers! You said customers! Somebody buyin' something from
somebody. So what's the deal? Whaddaya pay 'em in, some kinda Klingon goodies
outta that Star Trek show? They after -- ah --earthling nooky? You got some a
those girls from over at, like, Monique's Massage and Manicure out there in your
bass boat?"

"No," said Pop quietly. "Said all they wanted was to keep the parts. Whatever
they took out you didn't need anymore. Said they were . . . harvesting."

Patsy Cline fell to pieces on the Wurlitzer.

Late that afternoon, feeling foolish, half expecting a bunch of giggling people
from the club to show up on one of those party houseboats they rent at the
marina, Arnie sat waiting in the bow of Pop's battered boat as Pop, trolling
motor humming just enough to counter a gentle eddy, sat in the stern,
half-heartedly casting a plastic rattlin' lunger into the weeds along the bank.

"You know," Arnie said, "I wouldn't a done this except the guy at the
Elderclinic, that black doc, he told me it was probably gonna be surgery, and
odds on gettin' it up afterwards ain't all that hot."

"All you think of?" said Pop, trying to make light.

"Well I ain't ready to hang it up yet, Pop."

"Yeah. Course you're not," said Pop, sympathy in his voice. "Nobody ever is, and
I think you're smart for takin' a shot at this. I mean, what do any of us our
age have to lose? Lot of people, young guys, I mean when I was a young guy, I
figured when you're up in your sixties, up there, and you're on retirement and
the kids're gone and the damn dog has died and you're sittin' back takin' it
easy, well you quit worryin' about makin' money and chasin' tail and like that,
but -- yeah -- the pension's okay and the social security helps a lot and we got
the doublewide paid for and it is kinda easy street, and Marianne and me, we
still have a round and round she goes every once in a while. So hell, I don't
blame you gettin' shook about what that guy, that black doc told you. I would of
too, it was me."

Modesty did not permit him to tell Arnie of his first post-operative week when,
unworried for the first time in months by the thing growing in his groin, he had
chased a giggling Marianne around the doublewide more than once. He retrieved
his hook and switched to a fresh angel fly. The boat shivered briefly. He looked
up and Arnie was gone, just like that.

Although Arnie's puckery little pink scar was not in a place where he could show
it to others, or indeed see it himself without some uncomfortable contortions
and a hand mirror borrowed from his wife's dressing table -- one of those jobs
that magnifies; the first view, pucker or no, horrifying him -- he was a
satisfied customer.

Once again, the Elderclinic provided confirmation. Arnie turned his head and
coughed, the black doc withdrew his gloved finger and shook his head and ordered
a new round of X-rays. Arnie dressed, went down the hall to the sign that said
"X-ray" with an arrow pointing left, and turned right, a spring in his step.
Home again, he shared his good news with his Louella, who received it with mixed
but on the whole positive emotions and who quickly shared the tale with a couple
of other auxiliary ladies.

Word spread in the club. By Memorial Day, Pop had ferried nine more people out
to the inlet: Annie Hague with the lump in her left breast, Chuck Binder with
the growth they said probably wasn't cancerous yet but we'd better do a biopsy
anyway and watch it, Sandy Teeters and the thing in his colon, and a bunch of
others who didn't say and Pop didn't ask. Every Saturday afternoon for two and a
half months, he had sat in rain and sun, wind and calm, fishing -- almost always
without catching anything worth keeping--while the harvest went on and the
membership of the Retired Men's Social Club & Ladies' Auxiliary grew
progressively healthier, progressively more satisfied with things just the way
they were.

By the 4th of July it was five more -- two lumpectomies, a pulmonary node, and
two unknowns -- and Pop was growing weary. No, far more than weary: sick to
death of dealing with problems ranging from sick to death.

"I'm sorry about the kids," he apologized to Marianne on the Tuesday after the
4th, as they sat in the cluttered little kitchen in the doublewide. Marianne had
just hung up from talking with the daughter in Visalia they had been scheduled
to visit. "I just couldn't get away," said Pop. "Don't know what I'd of said to
Herb Green if he hadn't of got whatever was eatin' on him cut out."

"But you're supposed to be retired," said Marianne. "You've been out on that
damn lake every Saturday since I don't know when."

"Yeah, Mare, I know. But what am I gonna do? Who'm I gonna say no to? And what
the hell, it's only one afternoon a week for me but it's like the whole rest of
their lives for some of these people."

"Well, can't you get Arnie or Pete or one the other men to take 'em out in the
boat?"

"Tried it. Twice. Tried it different times, too. If I'm not there and it's any
time but around 5:30 on a Saturday afternoon, nothin' happens."

"Story of our life," sighed Marianne. "Ever since just after Marcy was born,
when you got that pusher's job up at Caribou. You're not there, nothing happens.
You're there, everything supposed to happen, happens."

"So what'll I do, babe? How do I get free from this monkey around my neck?"
Pop's voice held more puzzlement than self-pity.

Marianne reached across the white enameled-steel kitchen table and took one of
Pop's strong hands in hers. She felt as much as saw its tiny tremor. "Eddie
honey, I don't know. It's maybe only one afternoon a week now, but pretty soon
when word gets around, then it's going to be all day every day sorting people
out, deciding who goes and who doesn't go and figuring out what to say to the
ones who don't."

She sighed and swept her eyes around the snug little room, the contents moved
from house to house, always the heart of their forty-eight years together. She
said, "I say you're retired and the company and the social security, they've
said you've done your share, and you oughta give the whole thing up. Just walk
away from it."

Pop nodded. "Yeah, you're right. But you know, nothing lasts forever. Those guys
up there in that thing, they're gonna have something better to do, get all the
-- uh -- harvest they need. Someday I'm going to go out there and nobody's gonna
be home, and then I can quit."

"Someday, sure. But Eddie, you just might not last all the way to someday."

He nodded, feeling his age. "Uh-huh. In the meantime, what am I gonna do first
Saturday I don't go and somebody's floppin' around over at Community Memorial
Hospital I could of, you know, saved. How the hell do you retire from that?"

By the morning after Labor Day, the membership of the Retired Men's Social Club
& Ladies' Auxiliary was the healthiest collection of senior citizens outside the
fabled tribes of Kazakhstani goatherds. They all knew they had a very good
thing, and no deductibles either. Pop, whose tremor had increased markedly as
his weight had dropped -- enough to genuinely frighten Marianne -- sat that
Tuesday morning at a card table wedged in among eases of bottled beer and potato
chips, as he always did now, Mondays through Fridays, from eight to five, and
sometimes into the evening. His days were consumed working with Arnie and
whatever volunteers he could dragoon from the membership to sort through the
piles of applications, medical reports, and pitiful pleas that were delivered in
ever-bigger postal bags to the back room of the club. And then there was a long
envelope from County Health and a fat packet with a federal frank from the
Department of Health and Human Services addressed to "Provider." He was afraid
to open either.

Arnie, whose new lease on life with a healthy prostate had led him to some
serious dieting and exercise and who now felt a vigor that was causing
interesting problems at home, worried about his friend. "You know, Pop, this's
just gonna get worse."

"I know. In the classifieds last night, in the Courier? Somebody had one of
those prayers to St. Jude, mentioned me by name."

"Figure you got some direct connection to God I bet."

"Hell, I'm not even Catholic."

"Well, lot of people around here figure you're wired into something up there."
Arnie paused, deeply embarrassed by the direction of the conversation but unable
to change it. "Hey, Pop, he said hesitantly, You believe in some of that stuff?
I mean, is there something goin' on in that department I don't know about?"

Pop dropped the National Institutes of Health Taxonomy of Title 4 Surgical
Procedures someone had sent to bolster his case for a ride in the bass boat. He
shook his head. "No, Arnie. I'm just as bummed by all this as you are. I mean, I
don't know if there's something other'n those three little bald guys up there in
that thing. You know; you been up there. I mean, if there is some God somewhere
who's, like, quarterbackin' this whole deal, I sure don't know anything about
it. I figure if there's a God or if there isn't a God, who'm I to know? Like the
chicken and the egg thing. Which one come first? If the egg come first, who laid
it? If the chicken come first, who made the egg it hatched from? And either way
you got to imagine God, if you can imagine God, if there is a God, can you
imagine God sittin' on some egg to hatch it?"

He picked up another document headed HHS Schedule 5 and rattled it. He was tired
and a little angry. "I got better things to worry about," he said. "If people
think I'm wired to God or St. Jude or for Christ's sake AT&T or Sprint or MCI,
that's okay. I know I'm not."

Arnie's new vigor had sharpened some brain cells, too. He had a sudden insight.
"Ah shit, Pop!" he said, a grin splitting his round old face. "That's it, ol'
buddy. You are wired. That's why the bass boat deal only works when you're
there."

Excited, Arnie rose to pace between cases, snapping his fingers. "Figures
they're not just settin' up there twiddlin' their thumbs all week waitin' for
Saturday. They gotta have some way of knowin' when you show up with something
they can-- uh -- harvest. They musta, them guys up there in that thing, they
musta put something in when they took that thing outta you, back there, back in
March. Something like that gizmo they stick into bears and deers so's they can
track 'em, or that thing, in cop stories on TV, you know, that thing they stick
up under the tailpipe of a crook's car so's they can follow him around."

The logic was compelling. The truth overwhelming. Neither man doubted that Pop
must have something stuck up under his tailpipe.

Because they had been wise enough to eschew formal leadership, let those who
wanted to run things do so unless and until they angered too many members, the
Retired Men's Social Club & Ladies' Auxiliary seldom held anything that could be
called a meeting, or took a vote, or formed factions, cliques, alliances,
cabals, or blocs. Hence they generally drank and smoked together in
unfashionable peace and complained about whose turn it was to do what and with
which but without real animosity, although like all volunteers they took their
pay in hitching rights.

The first Saturday evening after labor Day was as close as they had come to a
formal meeting since the decision to buy the Wurlitzer two years before. Pop was
absent, presumably resting up as usual after an arduous afternoon on the lake.
But alter Arnie had shared the supposition that Pop probably had something stuck
in him somewhere that ought to be removed, the rest of the club spent a noisy
but generally good-natured three hours in a series of debates.

To their credit, although they all realized it might be the end of the best
health plan in America, the burden of discussion was not whether but how. A
D-Day veteran proposed an Entebbe-style raid during which the duty ER surgeon at
Community Memorial could be forced at gunpoint to look for and remove the
whatever.

"Yeah," said Chuck Binder, who'd been a sheriff's deputy for thirty-five years,
"that's about fifteen felonies, and what planet do we all go to live on when
we're done?"

Some of the lady auxiliaries who'd served on school or union committees or
negotiated deals to exact a little civility from their teenage children
suggested a meet-and-confer session with County Health. "Lay out the situation
in detail," said Marge Fromm. "Get the support of the medical professionals."

Mary Orton, who in forty years as a rural nurse practitioner had done at least
as much good doctoring as the Mayo brothers, snorted. Said nothing in the
ensuing silence, just snorted again, and Marge's suggestion died.

The debate rumbled to a halt at a little after ten when Pop, still unrested from
his day in the bass boat, appeared with Marianne and the black doc, a skinny guy
with a grizzled beard who was thirty years younger than anyone else in the
place. Pop was a little shaky, but with Marianne's help, he stood by the bar,
carefully avoiding leaning against it, and held up his hand. "Lot of you know
Doctor Waitson from over at the Elderclinic. . . ."

"For you that don't know me," said Waitson, grinning "I'm the one they call the
black doc. I'll let you guess why. Anyway, last couple of months I've seen
enough clear X-rays I didn't understand that now I'm ready to go along with what
Mr. Elson here was telling me earlier this evening. So I'm with you for a while
on this thing."

"What we gotta do," said Pop, "is we gotta kind of reorganize things around here
on account I'm not getting any younger."

Cries of "Come on, you're still a kid!" and "I got underwear older'n you!"

Pop held up a hand. "What we gotta do is have what they used to call in P-G 'n E
a division of labor. Doc Waitson here, he'll take on what he calls the triage,
sortin' out the people who need what they can get from one of our boat trips
from those that don't."

Cheers and whistles from the volunteers Pop had coerced into back room
paperwork.

Waitson said, "Whoever I send you for a boat trip's got nothing to do with
medicine. You understand what I'm saying? I got a license to worry about. And
the folks come here at my recommendation? They aren't necessarily going to be
much like you. They'll be from around here, in the county all right, but some
will be poor and some will be rich and some will talk with funny accents and the
odds are more will be some different color than won't be."

No cheers. Thoughtful silence. Throats clearing. Chairs squeaking. The black doc
thought, this'll maybe kill it, this is a whole other thing. This is too big a
change.

On the Wurlitzer Randy Travis said we ain't out of love yet.

"And the other thing is this here gizmo . . ." Pop pulled from his shin pocket a
baggie with a plump golden needle gleaming in it. ". . . which Doc pulled outta
my, well, outta me about an hour ago."

Somebody unplugged the Wurlitzer. The room was as still as a buggy whip auction.
Pop looked around, a little worried. One way or another, they had to stick
together on this thing. "It didn't hurt goin' in," he said. "It didn't hurt
comin' out. I didn't even know it was in there. And for as long as those
funny-lookin' geeks come around, as long as it's harvest time over on Lake
Oroville, someone's gotta have this thing slipped into him . . ."

Marianne poked him, gently.

". . . or her so's we can go on doin' the good things we been doin'. Only thing
is, you gotta be able to run a bass boat or be willin' to learn how to run a
bass boat, and you gotta be available out at the lake around five o'clock every
Saturday afternoon, rain or shine. It'll be like takin' the duty for clean-up
here, only maybe a little more uncomfortable and for longer, maybe a month at a
time.

"So okay. Any volunteers?" He rattled the baggie, its clatter noisy in the
silence. "Show a hands?"

The costs had changed and so had the benefits. Slowly, quietly, glancing at one
another and then away, one after another, every member of the Retired Men's
Social Club & Ladies' Auxiliary stood up and pushed their chairs back under the
tables, ready to step off into the Oroville night. And then, hesitantly, every
hand but one went up.

Hands in his pockets, Arnie said, "How many Saturday morning clean-ups do we get
off for one tour in the bass boat?"