The Other Oregon

by Steve Anderson

  “Wait. You’re recruiting me? Like, an informant?” Greg let out another chuckle, but this one was so real it made a squirrel peel off among the branches above them.

  Torres only stared back, squinting a little, like a director considering someone for a role. Greg didn’t like the feeling this gave him. He kept his smile going, but it wasn’t easy.

  “When would this happen?”

  “As soon as you can.”

  Greg shook his head. “I got too much going on.”

  “We would compensate you, of course.”

  “I have enough to get by. Doing what I love.”

  “Well, what if I told you that there is one militia group, right now, right here in our State of Oregon, that is a direct and violent threat to all you’ve written about Cascadia?”

  This was the last thing Greg needed. A militia was the drunken uncle at Thanksgiving, peeing on the side of the house and passing out on the sofa, ranting about government takeovers and New World Orders, and shouting out family secrets at the table. Drunken uncle destroyed Thanksgiving just by being there. He said, “And, Donny was involved in this, uh, militia?”

  “They could not exist as they are now without him. They talk a big talk and that kind of thing is free speech, as you well know, but here’s the thing: They may be stepping over the line now and becoming a verifiable threat. They use X’s as their calling card.”

  “Two X’s?”

  Torres’ phone rang somewhere in his coat. He killed the sound after a few notes. “Two X’s,” he added.

  “I’m just not sure about this,” Greg said. “It didn’t end great between me and Donny. I can tell you that. We had kind of a falling out.”

  “Even better,” Torres said. “You’re just trying to find out what the hell happened to this guy you used to know. That’s all it is. You wouldn’t even be lying, not that much.”

  Greg didn’t answer. He didn’t want to find out what the hell had happened to Donny. They were rid of each other, and Donny would have felt the same. At rare times like this, Greg wished he had a cigarette. He’d quit years ago, before he’d made himself leave Portland—all part of his transformation. He pulled off his horn-rims and polished them with a corner of his pattern shirt and could have just as well pocketed them since he could see well enough without the glasses. But there was a certain posture to maintain. He was a certain kind of guy now.

  “You look different without those,” Torres said.

  “Maybe I don’t care what happened to him,” Greg said.

  “Or his militia?” Torres took a step forward. “Look. You want to make the world a better place? Right? That’s what your Cascadia fantasy is all about. So here’s your shot.”

  “It’s not a fantasy. I appreciate you don’t call it that.”

  “Sorry. Though, it’s probably better I look at it that way. For your sake. I am FBI after all.”

  “True. Okay. Fine. What else you want me to know?”

  “We think they’re planning something, these people. We just don’t know what,” Torres said. “I can tell you that.”

  “Planning something?” The thought of doom and death made Greg shiver as if a thick drop of rain had splashed on his neck from the branches above.

  “It looks like it, yes.”

  “So, I would be checking into this group, with the pretense being I somehow knew Donny Wilkie had been there once, and he was a guy I used to know?” Greg said.

  “Correct.”

  “And how would I tell them that I knew about them?”

  “You wouldn’t necessarily. You would just ‘discover’ them as part of your research. We’ll get to that—we’ll brief you on everything …”

  Greg nodded along to Torres’ words, but he also went on a little walk. He stepped over to the mausoleum and peeked inside. He saw nothing but darkness and smelled dust and cobwebs and nodded at that. Torres had left him alone. He glanced over to see Torres scratch at his rear end, but softly, touching only with fingertips, not as if adjusting underwear but more like he had an itch but wasn’t supposed to scratch it. Which was odd.

  Greg gave Torres a moment to himself, then walked back. “So, just by listening to you, it doesn’t mean I’ve accepted anything, right?”

  Torres’ eyes shifted inward a bit as if he’d taken an imaginary step backward. “That’s true. Yes. We’re just talking. Like I said, It is up to you.”

  3

  “Afternoon, fellow Cascadians,” Greg said at three o’clock on the dot. He made eye contact with his audience and smiled. He held up his book Rescuing Cascadia. “One thing before we start. If you haven’t read it yet, the price has dropped.”

  “Is it retroactive?” said a blogger guy up front. This brought a few chuckles, but Greg knew the guy was not kidding.

  Greg sat up, making his face taut in his best impression of a serious young professor. “Okay, so, let’s talk about the practicalities of founding Cascadia,” he began. He was sitting at a fold-up table in a corner of a former warehouse in the Central Eastside, near the train tracks and river and the last remaining produce suppliers that had given this area the name Produce Row. The audience, if you could call it that—ten attendees tops—had taken spots among the four rows of school chairs fanning out from his table, sixteen total, mismatched but all hard. The warehouse was now an event space. The event was the Cascadia Congress, an offshoot of a more mainstream Cascadia conference staged in the Convention Center and attended by the region’s top politicians, scholars and wonks, developers talking green. Greg had been an advocate for offering an alternative that resisted riding the bandwagon of co-opting anything and everything Cascadia. The warehouse space had a prime location near food cart pods, brewpubs, bike events, microdistilleries, and a few friendly strip bars. The requisite freight train even ran through the riverside area. It still had a lot of homeless people. As the edgier conference, the Congress stood on its own legs now. It had climbed in attendance every year, and the write-ups in the alternative weeklies said this was the one to attend. It had the true cred in the long run. They had the youth, the sacrifice, and surely, people who would commit to making Cascadia happen one day. Greg got mentions in the weeklies and blogs as one of those—if not the one—who would lead things, or at least inspire others to lead. Some (admittedly minor, local) articles and interviews embarrassed him with their praise, their over-the-top pronouncements. He was the golden boy of Cascadia, their Steve Jobs and Guevara and JFK all rolled into one. Of course, it was exaggerated, but there was no one else to wear the honor. His words and deeds were all theoretical. Years ago, he’d gotten his start on YouTube laying out the idea of Cascadia. His blog began to get hits even when he didn’t update it. The book had finally come out the previous year. A stack of the books stood dead center on his table. Hanging from it was the Cascadian “Doug” flag with its blue-white-green horizontal stripes and Douglas fir tree silhouette up the middle. T-shirts and stickers waited in neat stacks bearing images of Cascadian maps and flags of Doug firs and Sasquatches. A tabletop sign read Cascadia Discussion Group. Greg had thought his talks would help the sale of his book, to help cover the sad truth that it hadn’t done that well—yet. It didn’t help that even Powell’s in Portland had shelved his book alongside conspiracy theorists’ opuses, off-the-grid handbooks, and ecological manifestos, even though his was serious political, economic, and environmental nonfiction. The Pacific Northwest section would’ve worked. He wished he would’ve had more control over that. He should have self-published the book instead of signing up with that small local publisher that was now out of money yet held his rights, including e-rights. He knew it would find its audience one day. Thus, the Cascadia swag. It sold way more than the book.

  This was his second day of the four-day event. Many of these attendees he’d seen already, the day before even. Blogger guy up front posted about Cascadian matters but mostly it was the Portland Timbers, which Greg could hardly fault. He wished he’d grown up knowing more about soccer; h
e’d always sensed he was missing out on something basic, like hiking. A couple anarchist street boys sat in the back row. On one end was that grad student with a neck tattoo he tried to hide with scarves and who used to be in a band and had been working for ages on his MA thesis on Cascadian dialect (the Sasquatch of linguistics niches, Greg joked to himself). Sitting dead center was the über-fellow with a waxed handlebar mustache so long and neat it transcended ironic. More than one of them had coffee going in a mason jar. These were the normal ones. Some people made fun of them, he knew. Said the Cascadia lovers were no less than alternate-reality-slash-future reenactors, only without the costumes. Freaks, really. So be it. Let them laugh. He’d stopped wincing inside a long time ago, stopped hearing the stale Portlandia quips. Though sometimes he just wished more girls would come listen, really listen.

  He could always be doing more. The ideal could always be improved, he knew. Yet, at the same time, he always had that lurking fear that someone would look too far back into his past. Maybe that was why he both envied the Cascadia bandwagon and feared it so damn much.

  Three days had passed since his sudden meeting in Lone Fir Cemetery with Agent Rich Torres of the FBI. He hadn’t called Torres. He did not plan to. He was stalling, he could admit it. Yet he hadn’t gotten a call from Torres either, and he wondered why. His hesitation at becoming involved must have thrown Torres off, he decided.

  Greg continued: “Let’s be truthful. Full disclosure here. We are not really talking about a secession when we talk about Cascadia. We’re talking about what’s called a ‘release movement,’ meaning, we would use established democratic processes to petition for release from the US and Canada with full consent of their governments. A form of Velvet Revolution, if you will. Breaking away without consent is succession, which could also be seen as a form of treason from many and invite retribution if not civil war. Secession is selfish, self-destructive. Ours is a progressive-thinking, enlightened movement. So, how can such a thing happen without doing harm? How can we rescue ourselves as a people and really get to who we want to be?”

  It could sound a little preachy and pretentious at times. But little did they know, he was speaking from experience. He plowed on:

  “Granted, it might be difficult without causing pain, but the way this country is self-destructing? The opportunity for a harmonious, even peaceful reinvention could present itself.”

  A hand raised in the back.

  It was FBI Agent Rich Torres.

  He had showed up without Greg noticing, stepping out from behind the nearest food cart to stand behind the last row of chairs and raise his hand in one fluid motion. He wore a business casual sport shirt and Dockers-type khakis. The look said suburbs, tourist, or a dad visiting from Ohio, often holding a pink box of Voodoo Donuts. Yet the way that Torres stood, with his feet planted far apart and his hands grasping at a chair back, hinted at something far more threatening. In the movies, a man looking like this was a grieving father who had lost a son in war or a baby daughter to a pharmaceutical company cover-up.

  Was Greg supposed to pretend he and Torres didn’t know each other? He went with it. “Sorry, I didn’t see you there,” he said. “You have a question?”

  “How far are you willing to go with this?” Torres said.

  Heads had turned Torres’ way. Greg could see the crackpot alarm ringing in their heads. The normal-looking outsiders often came asking the most abnormal questions as if Greg should seriously consider Cascadia’s connections to, say, Nazis in Atlantis or the president’s birthdate as a cipher predicting the date of Rapture.

  “We can discuss that,” Greg said, speaking softly. Why don’t you have a seat?”

  Torres glared at the hard chair seat as if it bore spikes, and Greg wondered if others saw how Torres’ face had darkened.

  “I just have the one question,” Torres said. “How far are you willing to take this secession thing?”

  Was Torres announcing a veiled threat—help us, or we’ll come after you? Greg told himself that only happened in movies. Any dreams of Cascadia were protected under free speech. So, could he know about Greg’s past? Greg told himself it was impossible.

  “It’s not really secession, though,” Greg said. “We were just talking about that.”

  “Sorry—‘release movement,’” Torres said. “But the question remains.”

  Hands had gone up. Greg ignored them. “Well, I guess it depends,” he said. “Who would we be up against? I think remaining nonviolent is key.”

  “Nonviolent? In the real world? Come off it,” Torres said.

  All looked to Greg, hands lowering. This was Greg’s deal now. “As I said. In reality? It could never happen without federal consent,” he said.

  “I’m not talking about Feds. Not talking about democratic processes, even. I’m talking about the rest of Oregon, outside this shining, forward-thinking city you got here, outside the green valley. There will be people and groups who don’t want to play along or have their own movement altogether, and it will be nothing like yours.”

  “I hear you. I do. There are people out there,” Greg said.

  “Damn right there are. What about a militia, for example?”

  Greg heard a ripple of groans. The ‘m’ word was not something any would-be Cascadian liked to hear. “Well, I would say there’s a fundamental difference between any militias out there right now and anything we would have. Theirs are there to take. Ours would be to protect. Theoretically. Though I doubt we would even need anything so martial.”

  “I see, so you’re Costa Rica all the sudden. You have no military. Though you are incorporating hunting country. Speaking of taking—what if they beat you to it? What if they go and secede on their own? What then? They don’t have a problem with violence.”

  “You know what?” Greg said. “You’re right. I could do a whole chapter on that.”

  “How? You already wrote your book.”

  A rush of adrenalin filled Greg’s sinuses, a heat behind his forehead. This Torres really knew how to dig at him. He fought the urge to dismiss Torres as unreasonable—if the man wanted to be a part of the discussion, he could refrain from aggressive argument, that sort of line. Meanwhile, conversations had burst forth. Blogger guy and grad student were arguing about nonviolent crowd control methods and a couple new arrivals about hypothetical forms of taxation while the anarchists just snickered. But Greg and Torres held eye contact.

  “You make a good point,” Greg said, adding “maybe I should have done more,” and only Torres seemed to hear it over the din.

  Torres nodded. He loosened his grip on the chair, relaxed his stance. He stuck around for the rest of it but didn’t ask another question. Greg got things back on track, keeping it light with jokey hypotheses about employing Sasquatches as Cascadian border patrol or better yet the back line of a Cascadian national soccer team.

  By the time his talk was finished, Torres was gone.

  Outside, after the day’s events had ended, Greg expected to find Torres waiting for him. Torres wasn’t there. Relieved, Greg breathed in the cool, moist air and lugged his bag over to the parking lot, a vast line of bicycles. It always gave him a thrill to see so many bikes for this was Cascadia in the making. His was a gem, a locally-made commuter with sprung leather saddle, custom-fit wood fenders, oversized front cargo rack, a vintage refurbished Sturmey-Archer hub, and lots of shining metal, the saddle alone worth more than he could afford. He rode away, the street showing stretches of old cobblestone and lined with old loading docks. He linked up with the Burnside Bridge, to cross the river. On the west side he pedaled through a dense urban mix of condos, bars, and shops—the Pearl District to the right and Old Town at his back and the up-and-coming West End still before him. A slick streetcar whooshed by, just a few meters away—yes, meters; Greg had made a big deal in his book about adopting the metric system and he’d ended up thinking in it. Goofy, sure, but he couldn’t help himself. It was all part of remaking himself, of living the daydream
. In his daydream, Portland is the capital of Cascadia. The streetcars run on biofuel. Waves of bike commuters travel main roads and the few cars use the side lanes. At least 53 percent of buildings have green roofs, residential front yards are gardens, and giant rain barrels abound. Water flows and flows. River taxis glide on the broad Willamette River running through the city. On the waterfront, Cascadia flags fly above a riverside auditorium packed with a rapt audience. On stage—and this is the really goofy part, Greg stands before a table stacked with his books. And wild applause kicks in. He couldn’t help this last part. The first part of the dream was what actually mattered, he always told himself.

  He rode over to Providence Park, the Portland Timbers’ soccer-specific stadium, downed two pints with buddies before the game, took two hits off a pipe to boot, and once inside, inserted himself in the North End, the Timbers Army section. He waved a Doug flag and wielded his Timbers scarf like a medieval mace and shouted and sang the songs and yelled at the ref. He didn’t really understand the offside rule, so he just screamed when the others did. His Timbers lost in the final seconds despite having the ball all the time. A match wasn’t always fair. Life was not. But there was no ref to scream at in real life.

  Anything to forget about FBI Special Agent Rich Torres coming to stare him down. Anything to purge the feeling that Torres gave him. He had recreated himself, and he was still free after all these years. All he had to do was keep his dire secret safe.

  4

  The security guard lay on the oily pavement, next to a dumpster. He was bleeding from his neck and head, a fast growing pool of it. He stared up at them, up at Greg and Donny Wilkie standing over him. He tried to speak but could only get out a gurgle.

  “Jesus. All I did was barely hit him,” Donny had muttered. “I’m not a fighter. Jesus.”