by Kirk Adams
No one stirred as Steve continued.
“Not one of us,” Steve said, “came here to wage war. But we all voted—the democracy voted and the people willed—to fight. Can some of us be exempt from the draft because we have high-minded principles or weak stomachs? Will we let the sons of senators stay home while others risk defilement and death?”
Now Tiffany stood, her sons clinging to their mother’s legs as she spoke slow and deliberate, her eyes puffed and bloodshot and her face stained with tears. Her voice quivered.
“My children lost their father,” Tiffany said, “while other men ran away: men who left no children behind. Or wives or husbands. Or anyone at all. Punish them all. Unless they can bring Brent back.”
Other voices seconded her proposal.
Lisa also stood.
“I lost,” Lisa said, “my best friend Hilary. They say she might’ve had a chance if one of her neighbors ... her own neighbor, I say ... hadn’t run away in battle. I’ve always been a pacifist and I still respect a refusal to kill. But refusing to die is different. Let those who dodged the draft live with their own consciences, but anyone who ran away in battle has no place among us. He could have stood beside her without killing. Or even stepped between her and the savage. That’s good enough.”
Several northsmen holding flaming torches spoke next, most of them veterans of the one-day war. One wanted to brand draft dodgers with hot irons and flog Jose while others preferred to send cowards into permanent exile. One northsman even advocated capital punishment—though his proposal was greeted with silence by most villagers and caused Ryan to rise in protest.
“I might have died for Jose’s cowardice,” Ryan said, “while you were held in reserve. But hanging him, even if he deserves it, is no solution. It’s just more killing.”
The northsmen hissed.
“I know we must do something,” Ryan continued, “since no one can be allowed to spurn the will of the community or to send someone to die in his place. I respect pacifism like any other man, but I had a cousin who was a conscientious objector—and who died in Vietnam as a medic saving another soldier’s life. Jose should have tended our wounded on the battlefield. Others might have survived. All I ask is that we stop the killing.”
“This isn’t the place to debate ethics,” Jose said as tears streamed down his cheeks, “nor the day. But I had the right to refuse to be part of a military machine. Today I watched boys cut the throats of grown men and saw children hanged. There was butchery and mayhem and I was right to refuse to participate in it. I’m not ashamed of my actions. I ran away from genocide, not from duty. I’m the one who deserves a medal.”
Jose sat down and a dozen red-eyed women stood up. A Latino woman from the south spoke first.
“I’m not debating the coward,” the Latino woman said. “I propose every draft dodger lose his citizenship and every deserter be exiled. Why should they enjoy rights they won’t fight to preserve?”
Several voices seconded her motion and the woman sat without further talk as Steve opened the floor to discuss what forfeiture of citizenship entailed. After several minutes, it was agreed non-citizens would be denied the right to serve in public office and vote in elections—island or village. It also was decided that the restoration of citizenship could be granted only by the General Will of the People. Though most conscientious objectors said little, Jose protested a great deal.
“This is too much,” Jose argued. “Even Nixon didn’t go this far. He let protestors go to Canada in peace. It’s tyranny and oppression and I refuse to accept it.”
“You won’t have to,” Father Donovan shouted from the shadows, “because you’ll be gone.”
“Don’t waste a boat on him,” a southern woman shouted. “Let him swim to Canada.”
“Cut it out,” Steve said. “We aren’t barbarians.”
“We are,” a burly northsman shouted, but no one laughed.
“We can put him on one of the motu permanently,” Steve said, “or we can send him home on our rescue ship.”
The audience fell silent at the unexpected news.
“Some of you haven’t heard,” Steve explained, “we’ve made contact with a yacht. Its captain has offered to evacuate our wounded. Probably to Hawaii. It’ll be here by tomorrow.”
The audience buzzed and Steve waited until the excitement faded before he continued.
“Let’s vote on Jose’s punishment,” Steve said. “Exile on one of our motu or exile to America?”
Though Jose begged to be returned to America (protesting that even the United States afforded more freedom than Paradise), it was decided by a margin of two votes that he should be exiled to an island—with southern widows arguing that banishment to America would be a reward rather than punishment. Afterwards, Father Donovan pointed at Jose as he projected his voice over the crowd.
“I propose,” the priest declared, “he be exiled to Roanoke Island where he can live with the memory of his cowardice.”
Several amens saluted this proposal and it was accepted. A few minutes later, Jose was bound with ropes to await execution of his sentence—openly sobbing as he was led away.
“There’s one final issue,” Steve announced a moment later, “and it’s the most serious yet. We nearly came to a fight over the fate of captives.”
“Why’d we bring the cannibals here?” a northsman said. “They’ll eat us in our sleep. Or they’ll eat their children on our own tables.”
Heads nodded and shouts sounded as Dr. Morales stood.
“These people are a living cultural artifact,” the anthropologist said. “We’ve never encountered anyone like them before and it’s important for future scholarship they not be compromised by modern society. We must respect their way of life and not stand as cultural imperialists. Though we’ve already killed almost every hope for the unadulterated continuation of their culture, if we return some boys and girls, perhaps they have at least a remote chance of reproduction and survival as a bastardized cultural legacy.”
Catcalls erupted.
“You killed my husband.”
“You murdered Heather.”
“Let them eat anthropologist.”
Dr. Morales sat down—his scholarship repudiated—and Father Donovan stood.
“We’re forgetting one thing," Father Donovan said. “Our own charter guarantees citizenship to every person living among us. If they stay, they vote—and we’ll bring a neighborhood of cannibals into the political process. I don’t see how our ideals can survive it.”
“We can’t send them back,” Ryan said, “or they’ll eat our dead and their living. And Jose.”
“Then we execute them,” Donovan said with a shrug.
“For what crime?” Ryan shouted, red-faced and angry.
“Not crime, but crimes.”
“Name one.”
“Crimes against humanity.”
“Cannibalism isn’t a crime against humanity.”
“That’s only because Hitler,” Father Donovan said, “was a vegetarian, so the Nuremburg Tribunal didn’t have to address the issue.”
“So what?” Ryan said. “We still have no authority. What laws could we use?”
“The laws of war.”
“The war is over.”
“Then we use military tribunals to mete our justice,” Donovan said. “I’ve seen them used more than once.”
“I’m no anthropologist,” Ryan said, “but even I can’t see executing the natives for breaking our standards of civilized conduct.”
“Then what was today about?”
“Trying to save our own neighbors.”
“Which,” Father Donovan said, “required us to fight the natives for living according to their own laws and customs.”
“No,” Ryan said, “it was our neighbors who they ate.”
“We handed Heather to them,” Father Donovan said, “like a lamb to wolves. They only took the others after we attacked their chief.”
Ryan said noth
ing.
“They did no more to us,” Donovan continued, “than they’ve done to their own people. Hell, the more I think about it, the more I think they breed just to make food. How else could a few dozen people survive on those god-forsaken little islands? Where else could they get a little protein? They played Morales for manna from heaven and now we’ve lost our comrades.”
“We have two choices,” Steve said as a light flickered out and a corner of the assembly tent went dark. “Either we send them home to eat each other or we civilize them here. Executing them is out of the question.”
The northsman scoffed.
“They’re just hungry,” Ryan said, “that’s all. Food will break the cycle of cannibalism. There’s plenty of room on this island for us to live together in peace. Who knows but we’ll save them by our good example? Sure, they’ll become citizens over time, but we can amend the constitution to allow only children born on our island itself to possess full voting rights. The others can be admitted into active citizenship on an individual basis.”
“Brent died,” Tiffany asked as tears streamed down her face, “so cannibals could be made citizens? To live with his children?”
Several other widows and widowers agreed and it wasn’t long before even Ryan acknowledged that his proposal wouldn’t pass.
“I accept the judgment of the people,” Ryan said, “but we can’t send the children away since the women will eat their babies in a heartbeat. We can’t aid and abet cannibalism. If not for their good, then for our own sake, we have to let the children remain.”
This proposal was far more acceptable and the majority nodded their heads, if only slightly.
“How old?” Father Donovan.
“I’d give the teenagers a chance,” Ryan said.
“No,” Donovan said, “they’ve the taste for human flesh already. It’ll never stop. The babies are harmless enough and probably children under ten. Teenagers will have to fend for themselves.”
Dozens of voices seconded this proposal.
“There are children,” Father Donovan said as he stood and raised his voice from the shadows to silence the assembly, “who haven’t yet reached puberty. How can we support or even look after them?”
The audience let the priest answer his own question.
“If they’re kept under supervision,” Donovan continued, “they can be made to help with crops and harvests—and help earn their own keep. Why should our own people be forced to work twice as hard to replace losses while those responsible escape accountability?”
“Made to help?” Viet snapped as he stood up. “Under supervision? We’re talking forced labor. Be clear.”
“I’ll be perfectly clear,” Father Donovan said. “No euphemisms. I’ll say the very word—reeducation camps. It’s the only way that these people will escape cannibalism. They can go home to eat each other or they can stay here and be taught what they need to learn. In fact, we can be humane enough to let even the adults stay if we use camps. In just a few months, the younger ones will pick up enough English to communicate our ideals to the older generation.”
“Do you mean to say temporary slavery?” Viet asked.
“I wrote my thesis at Marquette against the theology of Southern racism and slavery,” Father Donovan replied, “and I believe in freedom more than any person here. We’ll let the natives choose their own lifestyles, sleep with their own loves, and worship as they please as long as they give up cannibalism and work their quota.”
Viet pressed the point. “Which is?”
“The same as ours,” the priest replied. “The same as ours. Of course, some of us will have to oversee their efforts and guard them from each other.”
“Ours will be happy slaves.”
“I don’t like forced labor,” Ryan now joined the discussion, “but we’ve forced some of our own people to work for a living, so why not these people? We’re no better than them and no worse. Donovan is right; it’s the only way to protect us and them alike.”
Similar remarks were made by others, though a slim majority seemed to favor deporting the cannibals until Steve reminded them that sending the natives home might lead to cannibalism of the corpses of their loved ones. Consequently, it was voted to reeducate the natives in Paradise. It also was decided the cannibals should be made to help feed themselves—with a food levy to be collected to provide for their guards. Indentured servanthood—or “citizenship training” and “republic education” as some called it—was to last only as long as the savages remained a threat to public safety. Children were given to the childless couples of the east village to perpetuate their own lineage and Kit was allowed to keep the boy she’d saved. In any event, no one else wanted the younger children. The southerners needed mature adults to work their fields and the northerners solicited teenaged girls. Jason explained that his adopted village hoped to bridge the linguistic barrier with the selection of younger women. It was hoped that the girls would learn some English while engaged in intimate relationships and that their subsequent offspring would be raised bilingual. This seemed a good idea to the majority, skepticism from the west village not withstanding.
After the meeting ended, chains and padlocks brought for animal care were drawn from storage and shackled around the fiercer cannibal women’s wrists and ankles. Combinations and keys were sent to the respective neighborhoods where cannibals were assigned to work—excepting only the west village (which assessed that slavery was more work than it was worth). The first native accepted her chains without protest, but the next three saw the final state of the former’s enslavement and resisted. Only after one of them was whipped with a leather belt for biting a northsman did the others submit. Once adults were secured, all natives were returned to the LCVP as an improvised prison. By the time islanders finally dispersed to their own homes, the dark already was deep.
Several citizens of Paradise didn’t go home, but wandered around New Plymouth in grief (some of them sedated by liberal doses of Valium). Others slept near the beach, hoping to beg a ride home as soon as the American yacht arrived. Grieving widows turned to their children for consolation and distraught men did the same (though several stepparents made alternative arrangements for the care of children to whom they weren’t deeply attached). It was in this way that Brittany was sent to Kit—with the boyfriend of the girl’s dead mother not bothering to say farewell.
Kit cradled a dark-skinned baby in her arms as she walked along the pitch-black shore with Linh and her daughters—who helped with Brittany, Tyrone, and Theodore. Viet and Tiffany took the more direct path of Mount Zion, along with Ryan and Maria, while Sean and Ursula hurried ahead. John remained in mourning at New Plymouth, as did Olivia and Ilyana. Lisa stayed with a friend from the south. Everyone else was gone. Six of twenty-four neighbors were killed in two day’s time and two others removed from the village.
Now the beach was pitch black as the cloud-obscured moon provided little light. War-weary islanders watched the movement of flashlights and lanterns atop Mount Zion and Kit twice stubbed her toes on rocks. Both twins skinned their knees and Linh broke the strap of a sandal. Only Brittany didn’t receive a scratch. The westerners walked until they came to their own beach, then turned inland. Only then did the cannibal’s son fuss such that Kit nursed him with a rag soaked in coconut milk.
“He’s finally eating,” Kit said.
“I’ll have the girls milk a goat when we get home,” Linh said.
“Will one bottle get him through the night?”
“He hasn’t eaten much. You should fix two.”
“And I’ll get some cool water for storage.”
“Not bad for a first-day mom.”
“It’s awful,” Kit said as she looked toward Brittany, “that she lost her mother.”
“Her mother was a drunk and a whore; the girl is better off with you.”
Kit said nothing.
“No one watched her,” Linh continued, “not even at the beach. She played alone, ate alone, and
babysat herself.”
Kit didn’t disagree.
“If,” Linh said, “we had child protection services, she’d already be in foster care.”
Only after a long pause did Kit glance at Tiffany’s twin boys.
“Do they understand any of this?” Kit asked with a tremor to her voice. “Do they understand their parents are gone?”
”It’s a blessing they don’t.”
“I wonder if they’ll ever recover from such a loss,” Kit said.
“I did,” Linh whispered.
The baby fussed for a few moments in Kit’s arms—until she settled him with more juice.
“It’s terrible,” Kit said, “to think he’s a cannibal’s son and the northerners wanted to kill him. That these tiny cheeks have been nourished by milk made from human flesh.”
“It’s the spirit that counts, not the flesh. The child has done no evil and we don’t believe in original sin.”
“Don’t we? I’m not sure what I believe any longer.”
Linh gave a weak smile. “What I believe,” she said, “is Viet and I are leaving Paradise as soon as we can.”
“So am I,” Kit said. “Even Hollywood is better than this. They only devoured each other figuratively.”
The last leg of the walk passed without further chat and Kit soon moved an exhausted baby into Ursula’s crib—which Sean had brought to her tent. Linh’s daughters fetched bottles of fresh goat milk and stored them in pails of cool water. The baby woke once, trying to chew through Kit’s shirt to suckle from dry breasts until she offered him a bottle instead.
38
The First Coming of Officers and Gentlemen
Jose was awakened at dawn and escorted to the motor launch by a delegation consisting of Ryan, Steve, Chuck, and Dr. Erikson. Only the southerners chose not to send a representative since they grieved so many dead family and friends. During the trip, Steve advised the convicted deserter how best to survive and reminded him that President Carter had granted amnesty to draft dodgers just a few years after the war in Vietnam ended—though his words provided little comfort and Jose remained tearful throughout the voyage.