She began to feel bad, and couldn’t quite put her finger on why. She stopped what she was doing and walked over to the window to look looked down at the people moving about in the city. The nattily dressed professionals, middle-class office workers, and blue-collar workers, all seemed to be hurried, stressed. They were too far below for her to make out their faces, but she could tell from their body postures that they weren’t smiling or happy. They’re stressed the fuck out. I know, because I’m one of them.
“How do you think it happened, Stinson?”
He looked up from his laptop. “What?”
“If I think about the fifties, sixties, even seventies, if people worked hard, they could have a comfortable life. They could afford a house, vacations, a functional car, and a pension to retire comfortably. Actually, even if it was just one of them working, nine-to-five. They had nights and weekends to spend together, to raise their kids.”
“That’s how it was for my parents. I remember it,” Stinson replied.
Brenda shook her head. “Now, both spouses have to work their asses off, and it seems they still aren’t getting any of those things. Why?” She turned and looked at Stinson for his response.
“The answer’s easy,” he said. He pointed at the oversized portrait of Brand. “Because of people like that. In the past, when the economy was good, workers’ wages followed suit, in lock-step. Look at the graphs on the internet. Executive compensation always mirrored raises and bonuses for everyone all the way down the line back then.
“The eighties brought the era of extreme greed. Reagan’s trickle-down economics plan was an endorsement of greed. That’s when you see the curves start moving away from each other—theirs goes up, ours goes down. People like him,” he gestured at Brand’s portrait again, becoming angry, “started hoarding more and more of it for themselves. They’re taking society down with their greed, at least every tier below themselves.
“But they don’t care, because they’ll be set for generations. Look at the results, as people no longer have time or energy to parent their kids. They come home late, worn out emotionally and physically, and just don’t have the patience. They aren’t there to prevent bad decisions. We end up with a lot of screwed-up kids who become screwed-up adults.”
“So,” she said, “you hate him too. I’ve always been afraid to ask.”
“I’m not even sure hate’s a strong enough word. I’ve wanted to quit since day one. I just wanted this on my resume. I figured we’d lose quick, and that would be that. Now it’s like I’m on this terrifying amusement-park ride and no matter how much I cry or scream to get off, nobody can hear me, I just have to wait until it ends on its own.”
“Exactly,” she said. “Well, we’re almost at the end of the ride, I guess. People will figure him out now that he’s got the spotlight almost to himself. They’ll see that he’s a fraud: in debt, a pathological liar who hates the people in his base. He’s a narcissistic, corrupt, unintelligent, lazy, and a drunk. They’ll see that now, right? Won’t the Democrats massacre him on all of that?”
“I always thought he had a snowball’s chance in hell—that he’d need a perfect storm. And that’s what he’s gotten so far. It’s what scares the hell out of me. Not so much that I’ll have to stay on the terrifying ride even longer, but now the rest of the world might be coming along, for at least four more years. If the planet lasts that long under his reign of terror.”
Brenda felt her discomfort grow. “You’re scaring the hell out of me now, Stinson. I’m wondering if he’s got our offices bugged. That’ll be the end of us.”
“And you’re complaining? I’m kind of hoping.” They both laughed at the thought.
“Well,” Stinson continued. “We’ve got our big-time political experience now. Everyone knows our names.”
“That’s the problem. We’ll never find work again. We’ll be almost as hated as Brand is. I guess we’ll just have to continue to hitch our wagons to him.”
“Think again, Brenda. What have we seen of him? He demands loyalty from everyone, but never gives it. As soon as he’s done with people, he throws them aside like a half-finished sandwich that he’s grown bored with.”
“Well, if he does ever make it somehow, there’d be hell to pay. Not only is it impossible to deliver the things he’s promised, but he also has no intention of doing it.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Stinson said. “Once he’s in, he won’t give a shit about any of that. He’ll just focus on being king. Everyone said he had no chance because he’s inexperienced. But he’s a born, natural bullshit artist. It’s in his DNA, and he’s been practicing all his life.
“He’ll continue to bullshit his way out of every situation while he works on breaking down the system enough to lock himself in forever. Like every other dictator in history has done. Our mistake has been in believing it could never happen here.”
“Unless someone shoots him,” Brenda said, laughing. “That’s why I try not to stand next to him.”
“Don’t ever say that Brenda,” Stinson said. “Don’t ever say it.”
17 Native Heritage
Tommy heard one of the Coast Guardsmen inquire about the open engine hatch, and then Micco explaining about the fuel filter. He asked them if they had any waterproof tape to spare. Tommy felt the boat rock as one of them went back to his craft to retrieve it.
The other guardsman’s footsteps approached the stairway leading to his location. He heard him ask if he could use the head. Don’t come in here, Coastie. There’s a fucking desperate Marine in here.
“Sure, go ahead,” Micco said.
Micco—What? Tommy felt panic at the words and gripped the vial in both hands. I’ll explain to them quickly that I hijacked him, then down this.
“Fair warning, though,” Micco continued, “it’s been clogged up for days, and I haven’t been able to dump it. Hold your nose if you’re going down there.” Nice going, Micco.
“Ours is bad, but not that bad,” he heard the man remark. “I think I’ll pass.”
The other man returned, and Tommy heard the exchange of the tape and thanks from Micco.
The boat rocked as they climbed back into their own craft. Tommy heard their shouted goodbyes and then their boat racing off. He waited, using all his self-discipline to avoid bolting through the door. Finally, he heard Micco shout “Coast is clear.”
He pushed the head door open and climbed back up the stairs to lie on the deck, breathing, looking up into the black night speckled with pinhole stars, happy to be alive. I have a job to do, and I’m still on track. This is my destiny.
When he had recovered, he went back up to the pilothouse to join Micco. “That was some fast thinking, Micco. I’m impressed.”
“We natives have it built into our DNA. It was rough trying to survive you white men.”
“You get no argument from me there. The things that happened to blacks, Jews, and other groups not only in this country but around the world, was horrible. But what we did to the Indians doesn’t get enough exposure.”
“Natives. We don’t like ‘Indians’ or ‘Native Americans.’ My people, the Seminole tribe, we had a good home here in Florida. Then the Spanish came, and it wasn’t so bad for a while—we traded and got along somewhat. When the ‘American’ settlers came, we were pushed onto reservations here. Then after they decided they needed this land, we were shipped away to the Midwest. There were countless promises made and broken by the United States government.”
“I’m ashamed of that. It’s horrible,” Tommy said.
“Horrible is right. Our women were raped and taken from their families as sex slaves. Women and children were slaughtered, as well as innocent men who were just farmers. They gave us diseases we had no immunity to. They took away our worship of the earth and nature, and forced their bizarre Christian religion on us—brainwashed our children with it.”
Tommy heard the anger building in Micco’s voice. “They took our culture, forcing us to learn English and a
dopt their customs and dress. Pushed their alcohol on us to make us weak, stupid, and dependent.
“We had always respected the earth and wasted nothing. We watched them rape and pillage every natural resource. They killed animals, who have better spirits than man, just for fun. We’re still watching them do it to this day, sucking the oil, gasses, and minerals from the Earth and hunting innocent beasts for pleasure.”
“It’s ironic,” Tommy said. “Most of those are things we accuse the ‘savages’ in the Middle East of doing today. History does repeat. We never learn, as a species, despite the scientific progress we make.”
Micco scoffed. “One day a guy from New York stopped by my stall on the way to Key West. He was complaining that he was at the Walmart up in Key Largo and nobody was speaking English anymore. I imagined my ancestors coming back to the teepee after visiting the trading post a few hundred years ago, complaining about the same sort of thing.”
Tommy laughed. “Right. What goes around, comes around. One thing that makes me sick though,” he said, “is this guy Brand who wants to be president—and his hero is Andrew Jackson.”
Micco spit at the mention of the name. “Jackson was the greatest betrayer and slaughterer of my people. The worst of them—back then anyway. Brand is the worst of men today. Maybe he’s Jackson’s evil spirit come back again. I fear for everything that’s left if he’s elected.”
Tommy wanted to say more, but feared he’d tip Micco off. He’s sharp. Maybe I’ll be his hero in a few weeks.
He looked out over the darkened ocean and considered the peace and power of the massive body of water surrounding them. He thought about the beauty of the many forms of life living beneath their boat and he wondered how much man-made garbage was down there, violating the creatures and their natural environment. He thought of a documentary he’d watched recently, in which they’d shown aerial shots of miles of plastic and garbage formed together on the sea, and it saddened him.
“Your people had it right, Micco. Respect for the earth.”
“That was our creed. The earth and nature were our gods. We only took what we needed, and we prayed over the animals we had to kill to survive. No part of the kill went unused.”
“Like the Asians,” Tommy said, thinking of his friend Sensei Molletier and what the man had taught him about his culture of respect and dignity. “I don’t know how mankind changed from that to what we have now.”
“They took this land from us, but nature will take it back from them if they keep abusing it.”
Tommy went below to get his things together for a quick disembarkment when they reached Miami. When he came back to the pilothouse, Micco removed a thick stamped-copper bracelet from his wrist and gave it to him. “Take this, from my people. It’s old. It will help you on your journey, whatever that is.”
Tommy thanked him and placed it on his wrist. He held it up to the cabin’s dome light to inspect it. “It’s beautiful. Is it symbolic?”
“Yes. To my people, the arrow is an important symbol. It stands for our ability to hunt our prey, and defend ourselves against our enemies in times of war. If the arrow points to the left, it helps to ward off evil. To the right means war.”
I’ll need both of those, Tommy thought. He made sure that the arrow was pointing to the left, at least temporarily.
Micco motioned past the bow. “Lights ahead; there’s Miami in the distance. We’ll be there soon.”
18 Motel Hell
Tommy paid the clerk behind the bullet-proof glass using cash. He tried to keep his face down, obscuring it with the bill of the ball cap that he wore pulled down low on his head. He raised his walking stick in thanks and took the key she slid into the metal tray. It was a regular door key, attached to a diamond-shaped plastic fob with the name of the seedy motel and room number, which had been mostly erased over time. Haven’t seen one of these in a long time. Old school. Better days.
He left the office and rounded the corner, following the arrows painted on the walls to where his room was located.
“Need anything?” he heard a voice ask.
He peered into an enclosure to his left, having difficulty seeing in the darkness through the over-sized cheap sunglasses he was wearing. In the glow of soda and candy vending machines inside, he saw a thin, shirtless white man leaning against the wall. He ignored the man but entered to buy a few bottles of water, hoping that the sickness he was feeling was from dehydration.
The man spoke again. “I got whatever you need, gramps. Need some dope? Want a blowjob?”
Tommy ignored him, lowering his sea bag to the floor and examined the choices in the machine.
“How about some ass?” the man persisted. “I got nothin’ on under these shorts. You can do me quick. Twenty bucks and you’re in, old-timer. Real quick. Nobody’s around. Unless you got a room. Fifty then, for an hour, if you need the time to get it up.”
Tommy selected a bill from his wallet and inserted it to make his purchase. As he expected, the man made a grab for the wallet. He quickly moved it out of reach with one hand, while grabbing the man’s wrist with the other. He used it as leverage to twist the man around, facing away from him, and brought the walking stick up and under the man’s chin.
He squeezed it tight against the man’s throat, slamming him face-first into the vending machine, cracking one of the brightly painted beverage buttons. A bottle of soda tumbled down the chute.
“Damn it, I wanted water, you son of a bitch,” Tommy said.
The man gurgled and struggled for breath. Tommy felt his adrenaline and anger surge. He knew if he kept it up just a few moments more, the man might be lost, along with his plans. Who knows what brought this poor bastard to this place in his life. He swung the man around, releasing him and shoving him out of the vending area.
The man stared at him in shock, eyes bulging and gasping for breath. He held his neck as blood ran down his forehead. Tommy took a step toward him, and the man turned and ran. So much for keeping a low profile. He completed his purchase of two bottles of water and continued to make his way down the last stretch to his room.
As he passed a door, it opened behind him, and he heard another voice.
“Hello, good-looking.”
He turned around to see an obese woman leaning against the doorway. Homemade tattoos ran down the length of her arms, and her polyester one-piece dress was stretched to its limits, flesh bulging out at the seams of her arms and cleavage.
Jesus Christ. It’s one-stop shopping here. “No thanks, lady.”
“Your loss, buster. You know where to find me if you change your mind.”
He reached the room and had to work the key for a while to get it to turn the lock. He noticed the room’s window was badly cracked, and had been patched over with old newspaper.
As he stepped in, the scent of cheap deodorizer filled his nostrils. Past that, further into the room, was an underlying odor of mildew. The bed leaned down at one corner, and when he pulled up the thin sheet covering it he saw the end of a broken-off pool cue substituting for its leg. He set his sea bag upright on an injured vinyl chair.
Removing his firearm from the bag, he slid open the nightstand drawer to deposit it. He noticed the Gideon’s Bible sitting inside, and pulled it out. It fell open in his hands to a page that had a business card for a local massage parlor stuck in it. A passage on the page immediately caught his eye.
“Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, nor the desire of women, nor regard any god: for he shall magnify himself above all.”
That’s Brand alright. I’m getting omens now; I must be on the right track. It matches what Moses told me on the beach. Brand’s the fucking anti-Christ.
He needed to piss. The smell of stale urine met him in the bathroom, and the tub and sink fixtures were rusty and dripping. A translucent used condom stuck to the bottom of the trash can.
He emptied himself into the toilet, and the handle fell off when he tried to flush it. He retrieved it, using a coin t
o screw it back on. Unwrapping a bar of soap, he found it already soggy, and washed his hands carefully, using the hottest water he could tolerate.
Exiting the bathroom, he lay down carefully on the bed, which made a variety of noises to greet his arrival. He picked up the remote control on the side table and turned on the television. It burst to life with the morning news and coverage of Brand’s upcoming veteran’s event. At least the TV works.
A woman named Brenda was talking about the event. “The veterans are lining up to support Mr. Brand. They just love him and want to be around him. They know that he stands for strength and honor for our country.” Bullshit, lady. He’s a draft-dodger. We all know that. You’re lying, just like he does.
The long night on the boat had exhausted him, and he rolled over to sleep. As he did, he felt it—a sharp pain. He probed under his ribs, pressing with three fingers until he hit the right spot, and the pain replayed. He knew. It’s back. There’s not much time now.
19 Performance Art
Catherine Brand readied herself for bed. As she leaned toward the bathroom mirror, the phone rang, causing her to jump and smear her eyeliner. She picked up the handset. “Hi, Mom.”
“He’s due back in town tonight, isn’t he?” her mother asked on the other end of the line.
“Yes, Mom. He’s been gone for ten days, so you know what that means for me. I’m getting myself ready now. Hopefully, he’s too plastered to want to try. I can’t take this crazy shit much longer. I’m going to wait until he’s in a good mood some day and ask him if we can’t just discreetly hire a prostitute.”
“Why don’t you just leave, honey? Why don’t you just leave him? You could go back to your career. You were at the top. You had the best roles on Broadway before that monster came into your life and ruined it.”
Vigilante Angels Trilogy Page 37