girl is staring through the plate of cookies out through the other side.
Suddenly, a harsh ca-chunk! Gordon turns. “What’s that?’
“Refrigerator,” says Rex.
“Sounds like it’s in pain.”
“It still works.”
“I never heard one do that.”
Rex steps to the table, pulls out a chair, finally settles in.
Gordon says, almost in a jolly way, “Law enforcement agencies can get a better position at the congressional trough when they have people shivering in terror.”
Rex senses that “the Prophet” and his “followers” do not really care about building the militia network. They just get high by wallowing in the idea of it. Rex can’t fathom this but does not confront or accuse.
Gordon is still (happily, it seems to Rex) going on: “And there are so-called antiterror . . . ahem, police-state bills lined up waiting for the public to cheerlead them into becoming law. Everybody gets a little something.”
Cory distractedly taps his own nose with his cookie. “That’s where another government-executed act of terror will come in. Like the declassified Operation Northwoods back under Eisenhower, tabled as Kennedy came in . . . where they planned to shoot a plane of college kids down and blame it on Cuba . . . or shoot some people walking around in Miami and blame it on Cuba. But CIA operatives later on really did shoot a plane down somewhere . . . I forget where . . . but it’s common knowledge. And one did a car bomb in New York. Blamed Castro. The US government loves certain kinds of right-wing stuff. As long as it’s a roadblock to socialists, the Red Sandwich, and all that.”
Gordon grins broadly and his wild eye opens so wide that it seems the eyeball would plop out. Rex doesn’t dwell on the whys and wherefores of this almost holiday pleasure in their voices but he has a flash, a three-second accounting, that the real and felt sting of what an enemy can do to you is owned by only one person in this room, Richard York, who was there, with real rockets, real roars and shrieks and crumbling walls, and pounding pounding pounding guns behind and in front of barely human whines, dripping jungle, land mines, and ingenious traps, Kabooom! a slack-mouthed head rolls along in front of you and the solid watery stewing heat and heartbroken feet, fireblazing sticks and bones, chemical wilt of vine and bough, all the many stinks scrambling down your throat. Dying sounds: brays, mewls, moos, sobs, baas, one-syllable cussings, bellers, silences between the Booms! and you are with the weight of another man on your back, your pack, running, hunching, crawling, yeah crawling.
Rex rubs his face, looks at the plate of cookies, “sees” the head and shoulders of his mother, Ruth, pressing each cookie with the cutter, giving shapes to their sweetness just hours ago. Ruth York, not a granny-looking older lady. She’s only sixteen years his elder, her still-black hair held back by a silver clasp, T-shirt snow white with a rearing palomino stallion, a cactus, a prairie dog, and a rattlesnake in striking pose. Heavy medallion of bronze on a chain. It’s a wolf’s head staring out from an aureole of sun. Her usual bracelet, turquoise. She has not one iota of American Indian blood in her veins but she, with his father just before he died and their American Legion friends, flew to the Southwest as a tourist and left her heart there. Well, one of them. She has a lot of hearts. And in some ways she is his best friend due to their mutual rocklike dependability and their mutual silences.
Rex refocuses on the softly lit room as it is now. He does not want to feel riled at Gordon or the boy. They are not the enemy.
But their hands move in the periphery of his sight, churning with their words. His own black-faced compass watch looks readier than ever to do service, ticking away the moments, pointing north, while his hands are folded in a mannerly fashion on the table.
Gordon’s deep wandering voice says, “The guys I’m hearing from via the US mail, patriot groups and so-called Christians, seem only to get launched into action when some rich rancher can’t anoint himself king. And one real estate critter in Massachusetts they were all hopped up to go and defend. The irony is that militia groups being in service to the rich rancher and real estate mogul is probably okay with the Bureau and whatnot. They do it themselves every day!”
Cory says huskily, “At least the Panthers used to arrange free breakfasts for kids. They had something like justice in mind. You know, love and outrage.” Cory’s cookie breaks in half seemingly by itself, a half to each hand. “FBI put the bullets to the Panthers, sent in spies, and did plenty of framing, like of Mumia on death row and the one girl who escaped to Cuba, Assata Shakur. You are not supposed to rise up. The proof is everywhere. So if I think the government wants to control all us little people, then—”
“You bear watching.” Rex states the ominous fact.
“Hey,” says Gordon softly in his run-out-of-steam mode. “Speaking of rising up, my brother, have you finally read The Recipe for Revolution, the short version at least, the one that has the cartoon Abominable Hairy Patriot?”
The girl makes some sound. An abrupt intake of kitchen-sweet air.
Rex’s eyes spring to her face, then to Gordon’s face, which is now struggling with that Tourette’s-like eye thing again.
So this girl is the one, the mastermind of the booklet with the orange cover and of the other writings Gordon has been so proud of. The big one, The Recipe for Revolution, kind of lost him. Not to the point enough. Not that Rex is stupid. It’s just that some minds are fueled by the gorgeousness of life while other minds are more straight on and wound tight like trigger springs.
“I gave them to Todd. I let him borrow them.” Rex feels caught. But it’s true. Todd, one of two teenage members of his group, seemed charmed by the stuff.
Gordon sits up straighter.
Rex adds, “But I skimmed it first. It was pretty good . . . like poetry.”
The girl tips her head in a little thank-you nod.
Cory says, “She’s a swashbuckler. Watch out.”
The girl giggles.
Rex nods at that face that looks like a fantasy movie’s special-effects human-lioness and her sort-of-gold-sort-of-green eyes are on him.
One night after supper, a bunch of us were sprawled in rockers on the long porch next to the Settlement kitchen doors. I especially remember Rick Crosman and his son Jaime, and John Lungren and Lou-EE St. Onge and Paul Lessard and Jeremy Davis and Butch Martin. And me, of course, heh-heh.
John Lungren was a quiet guy but when he spoke, it was in a measured way and something you’d need to hear. John was a finish carpenter and had that climbing-all-over-everything build, gray hair, steel-rimmed glasses with large lenses just slightly out of fashion . . . heh-heh. He was leaning back in a deep wicker rocker, knees high, but looked full of portent, not foolish.
He said that as we speak hundreds more small factories are grinding to a stop and big ones up up and away, not his exact words. He groaned and said not that labor unions have lost their needfulness but they were losing their stoutness. We knew all this, but it’s like a chant and warriors’ drums. You repeat. You repeat. It empowers the blood. And he was going somewhere with this. “More farms, thousands more,
