Free Drop City by T. C. Boyle

blow-by-blow account of who had said what to whom, going on about the shit in the woods, the weekend hippies, the septic fields that needed to be dug, and she was just working her way around to the point of the whole thing, trying to soften the impact, when Marco spoke up for the first time.
    He was leaning against the wall, arms folded against his chest. He was wearing a clean white T-shirt and a pair of striped suspenders that stretched taut over his chest. “We want you out,” he said, “all of you.” He gave Sky Dog a look. “And that includes you, my friend.”
    Sky Dog never even lifted his head, but Lester made a face. “Ooo-ooo, listen to you,” he said, “and what’s your sign, baby—Aries? Got to be—the ram, man, right? Ram it on in, huh? Ram it to ’em. Or is it that other Ares I’m thinking of, god of war, right? Is that it? God of war?”
    There was a snicker from Franklin, but the others just sat there. The record rotated. The jug wine went from one hand to another.
    â€œBut listen, you want to know about war, and I don’t mean this SDS shit and setting the flag on fire on your mother’s back lawn while us niggers go on over to Vietnam and smoke gooks for you, you talk to my man Dewey here”—and he indicated the man seated to his left—“because Dewey was dug in at Khe Sanh for something like eight fucking months and he can kick your white ass from here to Detroit and back.”
    â€œThat’s not the point,” Verbie was saying.
    â€œNobody wants to get violent,” Jiminy put in, and he loomed over Verbie like the representative of another species, all bone and sinew, the white shanks of his legs flashing beneath the cutaway tails and Donald Duck grinning in endless replication from the hard little knot of his little boy’s briefs, “it’s just that we all, I mean, for the sake of the community—”
    This was hard-going, very hard, and Star couldn’t contain herself any longer. “You raped that girl,” she said, and it was as if she’d ripped the wiring out of the stereo or shot out the candles with a pair of smoking guns. The room fell silent. She looked at Lester, and Lester, hands dangling over the narrow peaks of his knees, looked back at her. This wasn’t peace and love, this wasn’t brothers and sisters. This was ugly, and she could have stayed home in Peterskill, New York, if she wanted ugliness.
    â€œCome on, Star,” Ronnie said finally, but Lester cut him off. “I didn’t rape nobody,” he said, “because if anything happened here last night it was consensial, know what I mean? Shit, you were here, Pan —you know what went down.”
    â€œFuck it,” Marco said. “You’re out of here, all of you.”
    â€œRight,” Jiminy seconded the motion. “Look, I’m sorry, but we all—”
    â€œAll what?” Lester snarled. “Consulted the I Ching ? Took a vote, let’s get rid of the niggers? Is that it?” His voice was like the low rumble of a truck climbing a hill, very slow and deliberate. “Shit, you’re just trying to tell me what I already know—peace and love, brother, do your own thing, baby, but only if your precious ass is white.”

5
    The pick rose and fell, rose and fell. Marco was out in the heat of the day—a hundred-plus, easy—stripped down to his jeans and boots, sweating, working, feeling it in his upper arms and shoulders. Jiminy had been working beside him all morning, tearing away at the skin of the soil where the new leach lines for the septic tank were going in, but when the sun stood up straight overhead he’d set down his shovel as gingerly as if it were a ceramic sculpture and shambled across the yard in the direction of the swimming pool. He’d been good company, rattling on about books and records and all the places he wanted to