American Subversive

by David Goodwillie

The room was getting warm, but opening the window—even a crack—wasn’t an option (if Keith suspected we were there, Simon said, then he’d never come upstairs). It would be a long day, I could tell. Already Paige seemed anxious, pacing back and forth every few minutes to peek outside. Simon remained seated on the bed, but he was sweating. We all were.

  “How’d it happen?” Paige asked. “You becoming an artist, I mean.”

  “I’d been working the wharf in San Francisco, but then the city renovated the waterfront and the tourists rolled in. They’d watch us unload the crab boats as they waited for the ferry to Alcatraz, and every so often I’d glance up and see a face I thought I knew—an old comrade reborn as a family man with a chubby wife and sunburned kids. It was probably just my imagination, but still, it was getting too dangerous with all those people milling around. So I took a job at a scrap yard in the East Bay—no questions asked, and they paid in cash. I worked under the lights at night, surrounded by acres and acres of scarred and twisted metal. Well, pretty soon the stuff took on a weird significance to me, and I began working with it in my free time, shearing and bending, searching for a kind of beauty in all that decay. The owner of the yard displayed one of my early monstrosities up by the entrance, and a few weeks later some art collector driving past in his BMW stopped and made an offer. And that was the beginning.

  “I’d been living as Simon Krauss for a few years by then, and my IDs had held up well. It sounded like an artist’s name—rough and a bit foreign—and I thought . . . maybe I can go with it, build a whole persona, become someone else forever. So I gave it a shot. I sold a few more pieces, then hooked on with a gallery in SoHo and moved to New York. I’d been in the Bay Area too long anyway. As it happens, the art world was the perfect cover. Every artist since Warhol has had a bullshit backstory, because it helps with the marketing. No one ever asked where I’d grown up or gone to school. They asked about my influences, what artists I hung around with, what women I slept with, and when I didn’t answer, they liked that, too. Mystery sells most of all.”

  Simon stretched out his neck and arms. He was caught up in events of a magnitude I couldn’t fathom, but there he sat, exuding a serenity that was almost contagious—until, that is, I glanced over at Paige, nervously tapping on her thighs, and remembered what was at stake, what could happen.

  Anything. At any moment.

  “. . . So I found a warehouse space in Greenpoint,” Simon was saying, “and buried myself in work. The eighties became the nineties. The galleries moved to Chelsea and artists got rich. America got rich—rich and lazy. And I watched it all at a comfortable remove. Sculpture like mine had become the rage, art on a grand scale, swollen and overwrought—like the money that came with it. Soon, people began tossing my name around with the legends of abstract expressionism. I was the next Richard Serra, the next David Smith. Heady stuff, though I never bought into it. I always thought it was luck—luck to be working in an artistic field with hardly any competition. Massive welded ironworks? Believe me, it’s not for everyone. The downside was the publicity—the openings and interviews—which I endured to an extent, because the other option, reclusiveness, came with its own form of notoriety. Look at Salinger. Look at Joseph Cornell. I was as careful as humanly possible, but being recognized was inevitable. I always assumed it would be the Feds. Instead, it was Movement people—old friends at first, and then strangers. It was typewritten letters and tentative phone calls. A forgotten face at a gallery. A late-night knock on my door. Some had put their pasts behind them; one or two were still running. Most, though, I’d never met. They were young radicals who’d done their homework, the next generation of earnest contrarians, some sickened by the dot-com boom, others primed by the protests in Seattle, and somewhere along the way they’d heard my name whispered, like a secret password to the big time. The Weather Underground was suddenly in vogue again, but I didn’t care. These were kids, green and ill-prepared, and I had nothing to tell them. I was out of that business.”

  “So that was it?” Paige asked, from her lookout post across the room. “You just turned your back on the world while you lived the high life?”

  “Jesus, Paige, that’s a bit harsh,” I said. “He’d been on the run for almost thirty years. I think he’d done his time.”

  Simon winced. “Certainly that was part of it. I was tired of running, of pretending. And, yes, I’d fallen into this strange lucrative career, transparent as it was, as it is, but when you’ve spent your adult life working the docks and tarring roofs and frying eggs in boxcar diners, all because you cared too much, because you took action where others wouldn’t, I’ll just say my new circumstance was something of a pleasant change.”

  “I’m sorry,” Paige said. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “No, don’t be. Because you’re right. I’d been saved by strangers time and time again when I was underground, and now here I was turning away the next generation. It took Iraq to finally wake me up, to make me realize there was something left to fight for. Everything left to fight for. And so I finally got involved. Just small-time stuff at first, meetings with the leaders of this group or that—ELF, ISM, UFPJ, even a revamped SDS. There was talk of carrying out an Action in the lead-up to the invasion, and then again at the Republican Convention in New York. But it never went anywhere; we weren’t ready, and neither was the country. The Bush administration had done so many awful things, but the sad truth—and, Paige, please don’t take this the wrong way—is that it would take something far worse than Iraq, perhaps worse than Vietnam, to bring about mass civil disobedience in America today. I’m talking about a total collapse of the financial system, or an unjust war with a body count in the hundreds of thousands. Iraq, no matter how drawn out, was never going to be that war. Not for Americans, anyway. Besides, we were gun-shy, us old-timers. We’d preached revolution and no one had listened. We’d brought the war home and no one had joined us. We’d come to realize we were wrong.”

  Paige shook her head. “How can you say you were wrong when—”

  “Hold on, hold on,” Simon said, raising his hand. “We were wrong about our goals, which were immature and ill-conceived. Revolution was always out of reach, and ultimately unnecessary. But what had worked, beyond any doubt, were our methods—the Actions themselves. The bombings achieved exactly what we hoped they would: they shone a spotlight on their targets. And in the end, they helped get us out of Vietnam. Sure, it took failure in the battlefield and ineptitude in Washington. It took speeches and marches and riots. But it took bombs, too. Every movement needs a jagged leading edge, a front line willing to sacrifice. It makes the second wave stronger and more legitimate. I believed it in 1970 and I still believe it forty years later: that targeted, nonlethal violence can be used for good. And I’m not the only one.”

  Simon sipped his coffee contemplatively. We waited, entranced.

  “Iraq got worse,” he continued, “and we got more serious. We spent late nights in the back of Greenpoint bars, discussing, debating, arguing, about what we might do—what we could do—to combat the War on Terror, that awful euphemism, catchphrase for all the massacres to come. For when the smoke cleared ten years from now, or fifty, and the world’s survivors looked up through weary eyes to assess the damage, what would they say about America, about Americans? That we should have stood up, should have tried harder. And so a small group of us set out, once more, to do just that. We put the word out, carefully, to what few pockets of experienced resistance were left—people with the right skills and beliefs, the right temperament—and the name Keith Sutter came back, again and again. The ELF was the only legitimate group still carrying out Direct Actions, and they were brilliant at it—secretive in their planning and meticulous in their follow-through. What’s more, they knew how to manipulate the press. I’d moved upstate by this point; I needed more space for my work, but I was also getting that old itch again—to keep moving, to avoid routines. There’d been too many meetings in Brooklyn and—”

  �
��Fuck,” Paige hissed, and abruptly slid down under the window, out of view.

  “What?” Simon jumped up and in an instant had joined her.

  “The girl across the street. It might be Lindsay.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No. I just saw her for a second. Coming up the block. Skinny, right hair and height. She has a messenger bag over her shoulder.”

  “Was she looking up here?” Simon asked. “Did she see you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then take another peek.”

  Paige raised a slat ever so slightly and peered outside. I held my breath. I think Simon did, too.

  “It’s . . . wait . . . no . . . it’s not her.” Paige turned around and slumped to the floor. “Sorry, I thought . . .” She rubbed her eyes.

  “You were being careful,” Simon said.

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean the every pale, stringy girl in New York is Lindsay. I think I’m just tired.”

  “We’re all tired,” Simon told her. “Here, why don’t I take a shift at the window and you can get some rest. I’ve been talking too much anyway.”

  “No, I’m fine. I promise. Keep going. I want to hear the rest.”

  Simon sat back down on the bed. Paige poured some water into cups and passed them out. The room was cramped, but almost pulsing with intensity.

  “Okay then,” Simon said. “Let’s see. I rented what’s now Aidan’s mother’s house in Shady—she was still in the city then—and went about blending in. It was a good base of operations, and I used my cover as an artist to begin organizing, planning, recruiting. I spent weeks at a time on the road. After one trip out West—when I met Keith for the first time—I came home to find Susan in my kitchen. Scared the hell out of me, though I’m sure I scared her more. We never really left each other after that, even as I tried to protect her from my more . . . private activities. It was because of her that I decided to work strictly behind the scenes. I was too old to be sneaking around anyway. It took months, and then years, but we eventually structured the same kind of loose organization that Weather—and later, the ELF—had successfully used, a series of cells each operating independently but with the same agenda: to bring American ineptness and injustice to light using any means necessary but one—we wouldn’t hurt anyone. Not physically, at least. The Weather Underground never killed anyone—outside the group, I mean—and neither would we.

  “Our first cell was in New York. The Bike Messengers, we called them, because that was their preferred mode of delivery. And then—”

  “The bomb in Times Square a few years ago,” Paige said, her eyes going wide. “Was that them?”

  Simon smiled. “What do you think?”

  “That guy rode into the world’s biggest intersection and blew the door off that shitty recruiting station. He must have been caught on a hundred cameras, and still . . .”

  “I remember,” I said. “It was all over the news. They found the bike a few blocks south, but then the trail went cold.”

  “Indeed,” Simon said, his tone carrying the pride of ownership. He extended an arm toward Paige, as if introducing her at a talent show. “And then we had the Carolina cell, which spawned Ms. Roderick here. Less extreme, perhaps, but no less effective.”

  “You were involved with us from the beginning?” Paige asked.

  “Nominally, yes. We paid rents, sent supplies, and signed off on the Actions.”

  Back at the window, Paige peeked outside, then lit a cigarette.

  “But Keith was always the focal point, the star, even early on. It took a lot of convincing to make him commit to anything outside the ELF, but when we said he could handpick his people, he agreed to work with us. Lindsay was a given—she’d been involved in ELF Actions for years and Keith trusted her. As for a third, well, we’d had you in mind since the paper factory.”

  “You were watching me that whole time?”

  “From the moment you met up with Carter Gattling. You had everything—the brains, the fearlessness, and the . . . the motivation.” Simon straightened up. “I’m very sorry about your brother, Paige. And while I’m at it, I’m sorry this has all ended so badly. Keith wasn’t the man we thought he was.”

  “When did you realize it . . . that things weren’t right?”

  “When it was too late,” Simon said. “I just . . . I should have seen the signs. Keith and I met every week after the three of you arrived in Vermont, at a Wal-Mart parking lot in Rutland. I gave him money; he gave me progress updates. Mostly though, we discussed the pros and cons of each potential Action. I was shocked when he brought up Indian Point. It was clearly too much of a risk, both in terms of the Action itself and the aftermath, but he was so in love with the idea. That should have been the first clue. I mean, breaking into a nuclear facility with a backpack full of explosives—”

  “He was talking about a remote-control truck,” Paige said.

  “Even worse. I’m all for making a statement your first time out, but that wasn’t it. Eventually, he backed away from that particular cliff—or maybe you dragged him away—and I let it go. He’d carried everything else off so brilliantly, like getting the dynamite: that was a stroke of genius. As was your Indigo idea. They were exactly the kind of target I’d envisioned going after, and the three of you almost pulled it off perfectly. It would have been a hell of a lot better than anything Weather ever did. Getting in and out of that building, with all that surveillance . . . I located the plans and did some recon of my own before you and Keith got down here. Those notes on the blueprints were mine. And I stayed around to make sure you didn’t get in trouble. Keith didn’t want me in the area—we were arguing on the phone when you walked in on him the night before, and continued in person the following morning—but it was your first major Action and I thought you needed support, even if you didn’t know it. I followed you through the store, discreetly photographing security cameras and personnel, then snuck out just before you did. The Madison Avenue photo was the last one I took.”

  “I can’t believe I didn’t see you.”

  “It’s nice to know I’ve still got a few moves left. That said, I’d have never imagined what happened next, the bomb exploding on the wrong floor. I watched the news in a stupor, shocked that Keith could have fucked up like that. But when we met in Rutland the following week, he was so pleased with himself. There’d been no casualties, after all, and surely the press would zero in on Indigo—which is eventually what happened. I told him he’d been damned lucky. Sloppy and careless and lucky—nothing more. And you know what he did, instead of apologizing? He claimed the elevator numbering hadn’t been his responsibility. He blamed you and Lindsay, and it just . . . it broke my heart, because I’d seen it all before, the way people respond to sudden power: some with humility, others with a kind of righteousness. Lines blur at their extremes, and sometimes people crack. Keith cracked and I recognized it too late. When he mentioned his idea for N3, I begged him to forget it. The media, for Christ’s sake. But he gave me a look I’ll never forget. And when he got out of the car and slammed the door, I knew I’d have no choice but to try to stop him.”

  Our tenement building belonged to some other time and place. Shoeless footsteps pitter-pattered above us. Muted voices drifted through the thin walls as if underwater. And the smells, exotic foods and fish and waste, soon blended into a single tangy stink. When the heat finally became overwhelming, we opened the window a crack. Simon again offered to stand watch, but Paige would have none of it.

  It was late morning when he snuck outside to check on his van (he’d parked legally on the street, but still . . .) and buy the papers. Paige and I didn’t speak for a while after he left. She watched the street nervously; I lay on the bed thinking about Simon Krauss and the secrets we all lived with, or didn’t. Was everyone somebody else? And what did it take to find that person, the one inside? For me, it took a picture. An ideal personified. I needed to tell her this, tell Paige what she meant to me. And I was just abou
t to, I swear, but she was suddenly peering intently through the blinds, a frown clouding her face. Then she backed away, as if the glass were toxic.

  “Something’s wrong,” she said.

  AIDAN

  I HURRIED OVER TO THE WINDOW.

  “Look,” Paige said. “On the corner.” The glass was streaky, but I could make out Simon coming toward us. He was hurrying, almost running, and looking around like a traffic cop.

  “He’s all agitated,” I said.

  “Like he’s just seen something awful.”

  We moved together to the center of the room, facing the door, like fretful family members awaiting news from an emergency-room doctor. Simon’s footsteps echoed up the stairwell and sounded down the hall, then he burst through the door, his face tight and ashen.

  “What is it?” Paige said.

  “The Drudge Report,” he replied, producing his cell phone. He held it out to us. “I had Google alerts set for both your names, and when my pocket started vibrating like crazy, I knew . . .”

  He didn’t finish the thought. Paige took the phone and we sat down beside each other on the closest bed. She pressed the Internet icon. Drudge came up immediately.

  “Oh, no,” Paige said, and put her hand on my knee.

  Our photographs loaded side by side on the top of the page. Above them loomed the headline:

  THE BLOGGER AND THE BOMBSHELL:

  NEW SUSPECTS IN INDIGO BOMBING.

  Paige scrolled down the screen with a shaking finger.

  BONNIE & CLYDE DUO: GOSSIP WRITER AND GLAMOROUS RADICAL

  INTENSIVE POLICE AND FBI MANHUNT UNDERWAY

  “FLUSHING FOUR” TO BE RELEASED, CHARGES DROPPED

  Thu Sept. 16 10:14:53 a.m. ET

  **World Exclusive**

  **Must Credit DRUDGE REPORT**

  The New York Times is set to publish a shocking article naming two unlikely new suspects in last month’s bombing in Manhattan, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. A massive police manhunt is underway across the tristate area for Aidan Cole, 33, and Paige Roderick, 29, who were last seen yesterday, checking out of the Liberty Inn, a notorious low-rent hotel in New York’s West Village.