Transgender Smokey & The Bandit [Fiction]

Hello! I hope everyone is having a decent December so far. I know I haven't posted much recently; I've been spending most of my writing effort on a significantly longer piece of fiction to try and get myself out of the very bad creative writing rut I've been in for the past... however many days it's been since the presidential inauguration, I suppose. This week I'm going to try to cut the first of (hopefully) many videos on some of my film cameras and the niche they fill in my collection, and how I think they're interesting or useful for people looking to shoot film.

In the meantime, here is the first segment of the piece I've been working on. The prompt here was something silly I've been joking about with my friends for a while: what circumstances would necessitate a Smokey & The Bandit-esque plot, but for smuggling estrogen, instead of Coors?

It felt like the exact kind of story that might help me with my creative rut. It's a rather absurd premise, so dealing with the circumstances weighty enough to create the situation could still feel relatively light. It's not intended to be more than a short story, so it keeps me from getting bogged down in the weeds of trying to write The Great American Transsexual Novel. It allows me to write about cars without having to actually write about cars. It's more action than introspection, overall, so I can write situations that have a quick cadence and make it more fun to read, crucially.

Anyway, here's the very first chapter/section; I'll probably post more updates in the coming days once I feel satisfied with my edits.

01.03.37 1453

Clara’s eyes glazed over as the meeting ticked down into its final minutes. At the front of the room, her comrade and friend Semele slowly worked her way through a list of reminders and recent reports since last week’s meeting: a bake sale next week at the People’s Park, reports of minor skirmishes down south in Tacoma with some Statesian holdouts, a mutual-aid call for solar technicians to troubleshoot the most recent batch of panels at the 17th St. complex. Semele ran through this for the benefit of the most recent batch of recruits. Clara, at the very least, had heard it all already.

With the meeting adjourned, Clara snapped the elastic band of her notepad shut and slid it into her canvas bag. She pushed back her chair to leave, but noticed Semele glancing at her. The strikingly tall, dark-haired woman cut short a conversation with a new girl with the flash of a smile and strode across the hall, directly locked on Clara, in what felt like a single stride of her cowboy boots. Her voice cut through the din and automatically hushed the chittering newbies. “Clara—do you have a moment to chat?” 

“Of course, Semele—what’s up?” Probably another one of the communal Jeeps broke down, Clara figured. As long as it wasn’t rehabilitating another biohazard junkyard find, she’d gladly help.

Semele’s expression, however, was more serious than a Jeep repair demanded. “Let’s walk and talk. This is all need-to-know.” Okay, so not a car.

The two set out at a brisk pace, making small talk about the warmth of the winter sun while they remained within earshot of the decrepit former coffeehouse they used for their meetings. When they’d put some distance on it, Semele slowed her pace, and after a moment of silence began to explain. 

“Okay. Two weeks ago, Ingrid was messing around and she picked up an… unusual encrypted shortwave message. Really weak signal, not on a bandwidth many people use nowadays. She was intrigued, so on a gut feeling she tried it against some of our old encryption keys from the Rebellion days. It decrypted! Turns out it’s a call for mutual aid, specifically requesting us. According to the message, deep in the foothills of the Bitterroot Mountains, thirty miles outside of a little town called Salmon, there is an honest-to-God commune of trans women who have heard of us and want our help.” 

Clara frowned. “What? Where the hell is Salmon, the East?” 

Semele laughed and gently shook her head. “Yeah–no. Not Eastern Cascadia. This is in Idaho.” 

Clara abruptly broke stride to cackle. “Okay, so… Not sure where to begin. I’m mostly flattered that someone would think we’re infamous enough they’d know us in Idaho. I know we all think we’re hot stuff, especially with how the newbies look at us lately, but come on.” 

Semele shook her head again, forcefully this time. “No, Clara—this isn’t a hoax. Ingrid listened through it, and it seemed real to her. She broadcast a reply, and the next day when she could pick up the signal again, the channel was updated with a full request, as well as specifics about how and why they know about us.”

Clara began to walk again, although now she fixed her gaze on the ground. “Alright, so is this something we need to worry about—is their information dangerous to us?” 

“Not at all,” replied Semele. “This isn’t a threat. They want our help. Ingrid chatted with them for a few days and then let me know the details once she was confident it was legitimate. There are thirty-two women there; they all saw the writing on the wall in ‘31, right before the purges. They couldn’t afford to make it over the border to Cascadia, so they managed to wrangle a plot of land out in the Bitterroots for themselves. They have a few environmental scientists and a beekeeper, so they make the land actually produce; they make enough money to stay alive. They heard about us after the Battle of Bend in ‘33, and they thought we sounded brave and stupid enough to help them.”

Clara locked eyes with Semele. “So you’re telling me there’s thirty-something transgender women living in rural bumfuck middle of a place so fascist I wouldn’t have dreamt of treading there alone before the Split? How aren’t they dead yet? Every other commune out there was raided years ago!” 

“Look, I was skeptical too,” Semele retorted. “That’s why you didn’t know about this sooner—I spent the better part of a week trying to confirm this, because their request was… it was a lot, I’m getting to that. Anyway, during the Split, it was really easy to get fake IDs, so they mostly have fresh docs with F’s. They have a couple of women who had facial-feminization surgery from before the wall went up, and they’re their contacts with the outside who sell the honey and crops, go shopping, deal with the government, all that stuff. They make themselves look like a religious cult run by reclusive men, and the outsiders leave them alone because the honey’s good.” 

“And you’re certain this isn’t a hoax?” asked Clara.

“It would be genuinely inconceivable if it were. We checked satellite imagery records dating back to ‘31, and the farm is exactly where they describe it being the whole time. We told them to till a massive spiral into the fields; next day, Natalia took the drone out and confirmed it was there, so whoever’s transmitting does actually live on the farm. Hell, the radio operator, before the split, was an author who wrote both scientific research and trans lit. She told me about her work; I went through the tape archives and actually found some of her old bylines. It’s all stuff that was banned in the States a decade ago.”

“Okay, so they somehow managed to go deep stealth…” Clara thought for a moment. “They would be the only group we know of to survive in Idaho. This is incredible. Basically miraculous. But also: what do they want?” 

“This is why I came to you, Clara.” Semele’s eyes glittered in the low winter sun. “They need estrogen. They need a lot of estrogen. They have been running off supply they started stockpiling way before the Split, and they are running out. They do not see any possible way to get all thirty-two of them over the border alive, and I’m inclined to agree. They refuse to split up, which means they need it in Idaho.” 

Clara cut in. “Semele, there’s no way we can send any meaningful amount of E for thirty-something women through the States border. They don’t let us smuggle them bottles of Tylenol, they’re going to notice a damn vat of feminizing hormones.” 

“You’re so right, bestie,” said Semele with a sly little grin. “This is why I came to you, Clara. At this stage, our best bet is hand-delivery. You are the first person I would ever ask, and probably the only one I would expect to come back alive: would you like to take these girls their E?” 

Clara stopped walking again. “Are you asking me, a transgender woman, if I want to personally drive a car loaded to the brim with sex-change hormones into rural Idaho?” she asked with incredulity.

Semele was grinning now. “We have a spot and a time to get you into the States. On the way back, come through via the Pullman checkpoint; they’ll be expecting you. As long as you can get past the States’ defenses, Cascadia will wave you in; the suits in Olympia aren’t helping us, but I’ve convinced them to at least stay out of our way.” She clapped a hand on Clara’s shoulder. “Clara, I will not lie—of all of the harebrained shit I’ve asked you to do, this one is up there. I think it can be done, but there’s no way to be certain if it’s really possible. The consequences for failing are… well, you know already. We obviously can’t come save you if they take you alive. On the other hand, these girls have about three months of supply left. They will weaken quickly if they run out. We can move in two weeks. We can save some of the people we thought we’d left behind.” 

The two of them had paused at an overlook. Clara looked past Semele, through the gap between apartment blocks, and spotted the peak of Mt. Rainier over the water of Lake Washington. She hadn’t spent a day outside sight of the Mountain in the past year. It had been two since her last pass over the Cascades, come to think of it. The calm routine she existed in today was unimaginable years ago during the Split. Did she miss the chaos? 

She looked back to Semele and gazed into her deep, dark eyes. She returned Clara’s gaze kindly, but stoically, in that moment impossible to read. It didn’t matter; Clara knew her since before the Split. She trusted her. She had seen time and again that Semele loved her people, and would never send someone to die meaninglessly. If she was willing to send Clara, that meant this was worth it. It also meant that even though it’d been years since Clara truly showed the depth of her skills in Bend, she was still the best driver and mechanic in the group. 

The pride and possibility won out.

“Alright. Yeah. Sure. I’ll drive a car loaded down with estrogen deep into the States. Seems perfectly reasonable,” said Clara. “One condition: it’s gotta be my car.” 

“You expect me to send you in one of those rickety-ass communal Jeeps?!” said Semele, feigning indignation. “We only have three months, we need something that can do 50!”

Clara laughed. “You know, I thought this part of my life was over after Bend. I’m flattered you still think I’m the best driver we’ve got, after all these years.” 

“Are you kidding me? Half this group never got a license, the other half are on some shit about how hot girls hit curbs.” Semele flashed a wry little glance at Clara. “But yeah, I’ve never stopped thinking about how you drove back then. You’re the correct kind of insane for this job. We have a meeting of need-to-knows tonight, now that we have our driver picked—eight o’clock. We’ll go over the entry, exit, maps, all of it. How soon can you have the car ready?”

“Semele, my car is always ready.”