by Marge Piercy
Sitting on the floor beside Joanna with her knee against his, Corey could feel that she was unmoved by Chuck. She sat there rigid and condemning, and he wondered at her intransigence. The smell of his own early adolescence was in his nostrils. Maybe he had traded those needs in on others—Joanna and playing chief. She would laugh at his squeamishness. She would tell him, I’d make a tougher chief than you do. He answered her, But I’m not a war chief, Billy is.
Almost all tribes made that distinction, and he thought it a good one. It was too much to ask that the same human being be held responsible for protecting and nurturing and preserving the ways of his people, and for leading them into wars. For instance, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce was thought of by many as a great general because he had shepherded his people on such a long skillful retreat, but he had never led them in battle.
Aw, poor slob. Why had Chuck followed them at all if he understood so little? How many kids were as untouched inside? Fifteen years of programming, and he thought he could shake them alive in a few months of communal living. Poor bastard, Chuck could never see how dangerous he was to the group. It was a re-education problem, but they had little way of handling the exchange of political ideas. After all, kids came in mistrusting words, hating their programming, sick of the processing of school, ready to puke at the old coercive rhetoric of Buy and Die. There were almost no tools available in the tribe to communicate political values, but only to embody them. Which worked, sort of. Sort of. To be left with exemplary action because they could not talk to each other properly, made him feel like banging his head on the floor.
Corey rose. “If you disagree with the rules, Chuck, the place to disagree is in the council, not in the streets, not when you think you’re off where none of us can see you. The enemy has guns and tanks and planes and submarines. The enemy has chemical and biological and nuclear weapons. The enemy is ready to use gases that choke and blind us and prisons to break our souls and clubs to break our bodies. He’s ready to use shotguns and dogs. The only weapons we have are our bodies and our lives. The only weapon we have is our solidarity. The only weapon we have is our trust in each other. There’s only one thing we can deny the man who owns everything: ourselves. He owns the streets and the skyscrapers and the water that comes out of the tap and the gas we burn. He owns the music we make and the cigarettes we smoke. He takes away our minds in his schoolrooms. Then he sells us back our dreams and charges us our lives. He reaches into our pants and manipulates our wants and sells us images to feed those desires, so we will want and want and want. So we will become men defined by owning things made of pasteboard. The man taught you to take women like tissues and wipe yourself in them and throw them away.
You don’t need to go out of the tribe to know you’re a man. Here you can be yourself, and women don’t ask more of you—or less of you, Chuck— than that you be yourself. For real. Nobody gets caught. Nobody gets stuck. There is no marriage, because we are all married to each other. We are each other’s family. Children belong to the tribe, and we are free to love each other as we can. Yet you chose to travel back into the man’s bad dream. You took the promises of the system and cuddled them inside you, and you would not throw them out.”
Part of him was listening to himself and watching the faces … no, not watching. Feeling into. A sense that came back, like judging temperature, so that he knew he was in touch. The heat of attention. Part of him was steering his speech where it had to go.
“You came with us and lived with us and yet you did not belong in us. You want to be a part-time Indian and a part-time warrior and a consumer the rest of the time, a slave the rest of the time. But we live outside their law and inside our own. You cannot have what we have—the tribal thing, and what the man sells—the capitalist consumer thing. To play both sides is betrayal. To play both sides is treason.”
He looked around as he sat down, and he saw that the faces were still with him. The faces were against Chuck standing lonely in the middle, turning to his accusers as they spoke. They spoke for exile, and the sense of the group was to vomit out Chuck, to expel him at once. Corey knew expulsion was important, for what Chuck had done was the one absolutely rotting action. They could not contain in their body the dreams of success and merchandise and commodity sex that inhabited Chuck like demons.
Billy rose. Corey thought, he is going to speak against expulsion. Protect his warrior. He hoped someone else besides him would rise to oppose Billy, but he began to put together a speech in his head. In a way, such a crisis could be used for that political education they were always lacking, to articulate to the tribe in that very moment of making their collective decision some of the bases of such decisions. Then the judging itself—the expelling of the person from the tribe—was not purely punitive but contained the seeds of learning and growing for the collective. Then Billy knocked the rough framework of his speech out of his head.
“Expulsion.? What kind of fools are we? Are we playing children’s games? Chuck broke the rules, so we won’t play with him any more. He cheated and lied and bartered with our enemies, so we will let him go and do as he pleases all of the time on their side. What kind of fools are we? It’s our lives we’re playing with. This man is a warrior. This man has taken the oath to obey the group with his life. He knows our defenses. He knows where our communes are and who is in them. He knows where the farm is set up in New Jersey and where the West Coast farm is. Finally, he knows the formula for bread. He can go and manufacture it for the Syndicate tomorrow. He has shown already he thinks of it as something to sell to the highest bidder. He thinks of himself as something to sell to the highest bidder. If we let him go, we have only our own destruction to look forward to. I trained him and I trusted him. When we are on the streets fighting the man, when we’re moving into a new neighborhood or a new city, it’s our lives that are on the line. I trusted him and you trusted him, and we were wrong. We were dead wrong. He turned on us. He sold us. He sold us for cheap pickups and pizza and a flashy car. We are not playing children’s games. He sold us. We cannot expel him—turn him loose—and survive”
Billy moved to the center of the circle. There he stood, big and slightly hunched, with his fingers at the front of his belt. He faced Chuck. He stared at him till Chuck squirmed. Then he turned slowly around and looked at the circle. He held out his oversized hand and turned the thumb down. “Death”
“Death,” Matty said.
“Death” Billy’s warriors repeated one by one. “Death” “Death” “Death”
Corey saw that he had been outflanked. Private caucus. The more-militant-than-thou warriors. God damn them. The mood of the meeting was thick and ugly. Never, never could he do what had to be done, never was he close enough to everyone to sense moods and changes, never did he spend enough time feeling people out and giving them a sense of their place and their value. Never enough time, never. He stood to argue for imprisonment. Chuck could be detained on the farm. They could try to reeducate him. After all, they had time. Perhaps it was everyone’s fault that Chuck had been left with the inside of his head full of ugly nonsense, while no one had noticed and no one had cared.
Matty answered, “Who among us wants to be a jailer? We came out of the system to make ourselves and others free. If we haven’t won him to us in all the time he’s been here, if he’s been hiding what he really wanted all this time, what does reeducation mean? He fooled us once, so he can do it again. How can we trust him? And who wants to be his jailer?”
“Who wants to be his murderer?” Carole asked: hard-edged Carole of the warriors. Maybe she had slept with Chuck. Or maybe she just hated what they were doing.
“We’ll draw lots” Matty said. “It’s like security. Nobody should have to do it, but as long as we’re in the belly of a sick society, everybody has to eat some shit.”
“It has to be done at the farm” Harley the street fighter said. “It’s too dangerous here.” Chuck was staring from one to another, his eyes just pulling from face to face i
n dumb fury. “You’re all crazy bastards. You know that? Crazy bastards! I didn’t do anything you all don’t want to do. That’s why you want to get rid of me. Don’t you see I’m willing to go? I’ll walk out that door and wash my hands of the lot of you. I don’t need your old bread to make a living. I can get a job any time. Shit, I can promise I won’t bother with it. And Billy, he’s lying, because he knows I never could work good in the lab. All I ever done was break glass. I don’t know the formula for water, let alone bread.”
“You’re an evader” Matty said. “What wouldn’t you tell to stay out of jail?”
“So I’ll go to your farm. What do you want out of me?”
“You just said you didn’t want to stay with us,” Billy said. He got to his feet. “Why should you want to stay on the farm? What’s new that’s going to keep you honest? We’ll draw lots.”
The momentum had escaped Corey, and he had to regather it. A dangerous feel to the room. It was necessary to do something to heal the collective. The will of the caucus must be healed into the will of the body. Further, a bad task must not fall on someone who might be broken by it. Finally, his political instincts told him he must stay on top of decisions. Regain control. Corey stood. “No. I’ll perform any sentence of the council. I accept the judgment of the tribe and stand ready to carry it out” Had to, had to. Heal the breach.
By vote of council, the death sentence was confirmed and Corey was mandated to carry it out that night. Chuck was bound and Ben went for the truck. Corey wanted to leave fast. “We won’t stay for the dancing” It would turn his stomach.
“We don’t dance after council any more” Matty said. “Cadre have criticism, self-criticism. Dancing is for after we’ve won”
The trip back was black and silent, a long tunnel under a mountain. Joanna held his head in her lap and stroked his forehead. He had an urge to draw away from her. He would not let himself withdraw. She was his strength. But he could not speak to her. He could only lie in his blackness as the miles slipped under them.
The guards let them in. It was late and most of the tribe asleep. But Shawn was sitting up with Ginny and Ben’s little sister Ruth and three of the farm warriors, awaiting them. He looked at Ruthie waiting, and for an instant he loved her better than anyone, clearer than anyone. And knew he could not communicate it out of his trouble. She was little as a comma and dark, and she spent most of her time with the chickens. She danced by herself singing words you had to stand near her to hear:
I used not to live anywhere.
I used not to live anywhere.
I used not to have hands.
Now I live here.
I used not to have a face.
Now I see me.
There used to be others.
They used to be tall.
They used to be mean.
Now I see you.
Ginny stepped forward, her hands clutched. “We didn’t know if you’d be back tonight, but we thought we’d wait. Billy didn’t come?”
Corey made a brief report. The others filled in. Bound Chuck lay like a bag of laundry. Corey could not look at him.
“I’m worried about Billy,” Ginny said. “He’s getting harder. Things are building up in him.”
“Things build up for all of us. And power corrupts” Corey said bleakly. He wished Ginny would shut up. “Is it corrupting you?”
“Corey isn’t interested in power” Joanna said fiercely. “All he cares about night and day is the group.” And me, her eyes said sideways.
“The group isn’t power?” She had such a way of looking at him sometimes. It made him remember, but he always pushed it away. He did not want to connect this Ginny with that one. They were comrades now. But her look sometimes pushed on his forehead like a pointed finger.
“Better do it on the hill. Take him up to the cabin. Nobody’s there now,” one of the warriors said, and all three left quickly. Corey got his .22 from storage.
“You’re going to kill him? Have you gone crazy?” Ginny stood arms akimbo.
I met a monster walking up the hill. His name was Corey and he grinned and grinned and his hands ran blood. The executioner’s shame. He told Joanna to untie Chuck’s feet and told Chuck to get up. Chuck shook his head. He would not move.
“Why are you going through with this? Just because they’ve gone mad fighting doesn’t mean we have to. Why?”
Joanna repeated the argument to her from the council meeting. Ginny frowned. She sat on a bench, looking down. Corey prodded Chuck with the rifle till he got up.
Joanna said, “Corey, he wants the gag taken out”
“No.”
“Why not?” Joanna shook back her curly hair. “It must be nauseating to have something in your mouth.”
“It must be nauseating to have a nice conversation with the man you’re about to shoot.”
“Maybe he has something to say.”
“Sure he has: Don’t do it; I want to live. Hurry up. Unless, of course, you don’t want to come with me. Maybe it disgusts you.”
“Of course it does. But I won’t let you go up there alone”
“And you, Shawn. Still sitting this one out? Still see it as none of your business?”
Shawn winced. “All right. What I love best is your forgiving disposition”
“Listen!” Ginny stood up. “We can’t let him go, because supposedly he would sell the formula for bread. Okay, we stop selling bread. We give it away.”
Shawn sat down. “Why not? We want to cut people out of the money system. What better way?”
“Because the council decided. If you two felt so strongly, why the hell wouldn’t you come along? We can’t set ourselves against the decision. We can’t start creating factions. Billy uses the money that comes in from bread for buying guns. He’s into weapons training with the warriors. The time to fight the decision was at the council, not afterwards because you don’t like it.”
Ginny spoke a few words to Chuck and walked out. They started for the cabin. Corey wanted to send the others away from him and to keep them, to tax them for failing him in some murky way he could not define. They stumped up the hill on the path, tripping over rocks, lashed with branches. He hated the broad back of Chuck stumbling ahead. Wanted to drive the rifle in. The flashlight streamed ahead of them, swinging as Shawn walked. Insects fluttered through the beam.
He could no longer remember why it had been important to assume the will of the council in his person. Symbolic leadership materializing in concrete act: concrete dirty painful act. Heal the group. Fight schisms. Now he mistrusted his judgment. Long scramble up the hill. They were all panting. The dampness of sweat disgusted him under his clothes.
Shawn went into the cabin and lit a Coleman lantern, which hissed loudly. No electricity up here. Water from a spring fifty yards away—the spring that became the stream running down through the farm. It was a dull night. He could see no stars. The wind was soft and tired. It must be three. He did not own a watch. At demonstrations, he borrowed one. He saw Joanna and Shawn retie Chuck’s legs and then they came out to him. He had dropped his rifle and left it on the ground in the path of yellow light from the cabin door. Cabin they had built for people to be alone with their heads. He still believed in fasting and vision. Would what they were about to do pollute the air?
“We should dig the hole first” Shawn said. A shovel leaned by the door, and Joanna picked it up over her shoulder.
“A hole by any other name. Why don’t we dig the grave here, where he can supervise?”
“Come on, Corey” She touched his arm. “It has to be away from the cabin” She spoke very softly.
False delicacy. They were about to kill Chuck, but they must not discuss it loudly in front of him. That way it would hurt less, no? “Why don’t we ask him where he’d like to be?”
Joanna let go. “All right, I’ll do it” She plunged blindly through the underbrush. Shawn chased her with a flashlight. Corey followed sullenly. Joanna and Shawn finally agreed on a sp
ot, and Shawn began to dig. It was slow work. Finally he said, “Come on, you dig for a while, chief.”
Corey took the shovel and worked savagely. “How handy that there’s a shovel here. It’s for burying garbage, you know.”
“Look, we didn’t vote to kill him.”
“Yes, you did, Joanna baby.”
“Just to make it unanimous. Everybody raised his hand.”
“Everybody except me.”
“But you were waiting for a verdict. You said you’d carry it out. That’s why you didn’t vote.”
“How do you know why I didn’t vote? Did you ask me?”
Joanna bit her lip, turning to and fro. “Did you want me not to vote? Think how that would have looked.”
“Think how Chuck’s going to look soon.”
Shawn yanked the shovel from him and finished the hole. Corey did not want to kill anybody, not even for his best ideas. He blamed himself because he had not thought of an alternative. That meant they had not cared enough to invent a way that Chuck could live. Yet he was being sentimental. Chuck was a dangerous slob. The wind had stiffened. The sky looked thinner as they trudged back to the cabin.
“It’ll be light soon. So we can see what we’re doing” The rifle lay in front of the cabin. He had hoped somehow it would have been stolen. He had hoped that Chuck would have escaped, but he lay bound on the canvas cot. The supports were two x’s. Almost he hated the boy now, although he still pitied him and his plastic desires, pitied his awkward assertions that they all shared his itches, pitied his naïve hustler’s self-conning. Corey sat down on a rock. Yes, it was getting lighter. Gray seeped through the air.