“We shoulda seen this coming!” the trucker/preacher proclaimed. “The women flew too high, like that fella with the wax wings, and their wings melted!”
“Icarus,” Howland said. He wore a baggy old barn jacket with patches on the elbows. His specs stuck up out of the breast pocket.
“Ike-a-rus, that is correct, that is a big ten-four! Want to know how far the fair sex has come? Look back a hundred years! They couldn’t vote! Skirts down to their ankles! They didn’t have no birth control, and if they got a ’bortion, they went down some back alley to get it and if they got caught, they went to jail for murrr-der! Now they can get it done any time and place they want! Thanks to Planned Fuckin Parenthood, ’bortion’s easier than gettin a bucket of chicken from KFC and costs about the same! They can run for president! They join the SEALS and the Rangers! They can marry their lesbo buddies! If that ain’t terroristic, I don’t know what is.”
There was a rumble of agreement. Frank didn’t join in. He didn’t believe his problems with Elaine had anything whatsoever to do with abortion or lesbians.
“All in just one hundred years!” The trucker/preacher lowered his voice. He could do that and still be heard because someone had pulled the plug on the jukebox, killing Travis Tritt in a dying gurgle. “They ain’t just pulled even, like they said they wanted, they done pulled ahead. Do you want to know what proves it?”
Now, Frank had to admit, the man was getting closer to something. Elaine could never cut him any slack. It was always her way, her call. To find himself warming to this bumpkin’s homily gave Frank a sick feeling—but he couldn’t deny it. Nor was he alone. The whole barroom congregation was listening closely, their mouths agape. Except for Howland, who was grinning like a guy watching a monkey do a dance on a street corner.
“They can dress like men, that’s what proves it! A hundred years ago, a woman wouldn’t have been caught dead in pants unless she was ridin a hoss, and now they wear em everywhere!”
“What you got against long legs in tight pants, asshole?” a woman called, and there was general laughter.
“Nuthin!” the trucker/preacher shot back. “But do you think a man—a natural man, not one of those New York trannies—would be caught dead on the streets of Dooling in a dress? No! They’d be called crazy! They’d be laughed at! But the women, now they get to have it both ways! They forgot what the Bible says about how a woman should follow her husband in all things, and sew, and cook, and have the kiddies, and not be out in public wearing hot pants! Get even with men, they mighta been left alone! But that wasn’t enough! They had to get ahead! Had to make us second best! They flew too close to the sun and God put em to sleep!”
He blinked and rubbed a hand over his beard-scratchy face, seeming to realize where he was and what he was doing—spewing his private thoughts to a barroom filled with staring people.
“Ike-a-rus,” he said, and abruptly sat down.
“Thank you, Mr. Carson Struthers, from RFD 2.” That was Pudge Marone, bartender and owner of the Squeak, hollering out from behind his bar. “Our own local celebrity, folks: ‘Country Strong’ Struthers. Watch out for the right hook. Carson’s my ex-brother-in-law.” Pudge was a would-be comedian with saggy Rodney Dangerfield cheeks. Not all that funny, but he gave a fair pour. “That was some real food for thought, Carson. I look forward to discussing all this with my sister at Thanksgiving dinner.”
There was more laughter at that.
Before the general conversation could start up again, or before someone could plug in the juke and reanimate Mr. Tritt, Howland stood up, holding a hand in the air. History professor, Frank suddenly remembered. That’s what he said he was. Said he was going to name his new dog Tacitus, after his favorite Roman historian. Frank had thought it was a lot of name for a bichon frise.
“My friends,” the professor said in rolling tones, “with all that has happened today, it is easy to understand why we haven’t yet thought of tomorrow, and all the tomorrows to come. Let us put morals and morality and hot pants aside for a moment and consider the practicalities.”
He patted Carson “Country Strong” Struthers’s burly shoulder.
“This gentleman has a point; women have indeed surpassed men in certain aspects, at least in western society, and I submit that they have done so in ways rather more important than their freedom to shop at Walmart ungirdled and with their hair in rollers. Suppose this—let’s call it a plague, for want of a better word—suppose this plague had gone the other way, and it was the men falling asleep and not waking up?”
Utter silence in the Squeaky Wheel. Every eye trained on Howland, who seemed to enjoy the attention. His delivery was not that of a backwoods Bible-thumper, but it was still mesmerizing: unhesitating and practiced.
“The women could re-start the human race, could they not? Of course they could. There are millions of sperm donations—frozen babies-in-waiting—stored in facilities all across this great country of ours. Tens and tens of millions across the world! The result would be babies of both sexes!”
“Assuming the new male babies didn’t also grow cocoons as soon as they stopped crying and fell asleep for the first time,” a very pretty young woman said. She had appeared alongside Flickinger. It occurred to Frank that the trucker/preacher/ex-boxer had missed one thing in his oration: women just naturally looked better than men. More finished, somehow.
“Yes,” Howland agreed, “but even if that were the case, women could continue to reproduce for generations, possibly until Aurora ran its course. Can men do that? Gentlemen, where will the human race be in fifty years, if the women don’t wake up? Where will it be in a hundred?”
Now the silence was broken by a man who began to bawl in great, noisy blabbers.
Howland ignored him. “But perhaps the question of future generations is moot.” He raised a finger. “History suggests an extremely uncomfortable idea about human nature, my friends, one that may explain why, as this gentleman here has so passionately elucidated, women have got ahead. The idea, baldly stated, is this: women are sane, but men are mad.”
“Bullshit!” someone called. “Fuckin bullshit!”
Howland was not deterred; he actually smiled. “Is it? Who makes up your motorcycle gangs? Men. Who comprises the gangs that have turned neighborhoods in Chicago and Detroit into free-fire zones? Boys. Who are the ones in power who start the wars and who are the ones who—with the exception of a few female helicopter pilots and such—fight those wars? Men. Oh, and who suffers as collateral damage? Women and children, mostly.”