Dead Sand

by Brendan DuBois

  “Holy God,” one of the reporters near me said. “Holy God.”

  My notebook was in my hand, along with a pen, but I didn’t have to take any notes. I knew I would never forget what I was seeing, would never forget the shouts and screams and the police officers doing their jobs, as disagreeable as it was.

  * * *

  I shrugged off my knapsack, opened it up and pulled out a water bottle, and took a long swallow. Until I had drunk the water, I didn’t realize how thirsty I had been. I finished off half the bottle and was still thirsty. I looked to the cops. In good order they had marched back to their previous position. Over at the mass of protesters, some had given up, had started straggling back to the woods line, and then—

  I couldn’t believe it. Another group had come out of the mass of antinuclear activists, arms linked, marching, and they were going slow, and they were singing. The wind shifted and I recognized the song.

  “We shall overcome … we shall overcome…”

  Something thudded deep in my chest. This had gone someplace different now, was something more than just an antinuclear demonstration in front of a New Hampshire nuclear power plant. No, this was something else. This was the power of the state opposing a group of its citizens. I didn’t have that joking cynical feeling anymore about being here out on the salt marsh. Right now, I didn’t know what to think.

  More tear gas, more clashes, and the demonstrators fell back again, some sobbing, others falling down while some of their companions, wearing T-shirts over their coats marked with red crosses, poured water over their faces.

  I drank some more water and watched what was going on before me, hoping this day would come to an end.

  * * *

  Tired from standing all morning long, and with the sun high up, warming my skin, I found a dry spot of marsh grass and sat down. I was close to the demonstrators, who were milling about, some singing, others talking, some huddling together in groups, hugging. From one affinity group I saw a young blond woman emerge and go over to a water dump of about a dozen half-gallon jugs of water, where she used one to wash her face. I got up quickly and approached her and said, “Haleigh.”

  She lifted her face. Her blond hair was soaked, and her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. Her jeans and UNH sweatshirt were splattered with mud, and she had a pink ribbon fluttering from her right arm.

  “Lewis,” she said, her voice hoarse. “One hell of a day, isn’t it?”

  “That it is. How are you doing?”

  She wiped at her eyes and face with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “Okay … I guess. I mean, none of us thought we’d walk right in … but we thought we could get over the fence, in large enough numbers … oh, it’s a hell of a mess. The cops … they’re good at what they do.”

  “What’s next?”

  She coughed. “We try again.”

  “You think the third time’s going to be the charm?”

  Haleigh attempted a smile. “That’s what we’re here for.”

  I said, “Look, the cops aren’t going to let you pass on through, singing gospel hymns, no matter how dedicated you might be. Don’t you think you’ve done enough, Haleigh?”

  She wiped at her face again. “No. Not enough. Never enough. We’ve marched, we’ve rallied, and we’ve come here together, Lewis. We’re not going to give up—not today, not ever.”

  I said, “Haleigh, you’re—”

  “Please,” she said. “Don’t try to convince me otherwise. I know you’ve been places, seen things, done things. I know you probably think this is all silly and immature.” She looked back at the mass of people, some of them lining up, ready to go at the police again. “We’re doing what we think is right. No matter what the police or the government or anybody else thinks. We’re doing what we think is right. Do you understand?”

  I had a faint memory of being that age, of being so righteous, so self-assured. “I do.”

  A better smile this time. “Good.” She reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out a length of pink ribbon. “I’d like to give this to you, if you don’t mind.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “It’s the symbol of my affinity group,” she said. “The Pink Panther Patrol. Since nuclear power isn’t good for birds, people, or animals. Including pink panthers.”

  I took the ribbon, thought for a moment, and then slipped it through a knapsack strap. Maybe I was violating whatever journalistic boundary I was supposed to maintain by being a cool and neutral observer. But I saw she appreciated what I had done, and that was fine enough for me.

  I said, “Your fellow antinukers might think I’m a professor or something.”

  “Or something,” she said, “since everybody in the Pink Panther Patrol is female.”

  Then, a surprise. A quick peck on my cheek and she said, “Do your job, but be close to us this time. I think we’re going to do it. Just you watch.”

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll be watching.”

  * * *

  After all the planning and talking and discussion, it was the approaching tide that forced this last and hardest confrontation. Water was starting to ooze and trickle into the open cuts and gullies in the marshland, and from the intensity of the meetings going on among the diminished ranks of protesters, I got the feeling this was going to be their last stand. Or their last march. A tall bearded man stood apart from one group of activists and said, “We’ve got to stop debating! We’ve got to stop talking! There’s no more time!”

  A couple of people yelled back at him, and he pointed to the ocean and shouted, “That tide’s coming in, no matter how you feel, how you decide! In a couple of hours, we’re going to be knee-deep in water! The time is now!”

  That last call seemed to galvanize the remaining demonstrators, and even though it was their third try, more people were lining up, linking their arms together. Some of them cast foul looks our way, to the members of the news media, and I had an idea of what they were thinking: They were putting everything on the line for what they believed in, and all we were doing was recording their pain and sacrifice, and for what?

  For something called the news.

  At the end of one line, I saw a group of college-aged women linked arm to arm, all of them wearing fluttering pink ribbons on their arms, and this bit of news was no longer just news to me. Someone I knew was up there on the front line, ready to face a long line of cops, and maybe at a different time and place, Haleigh and Diane could be friends of a sort, friendly neighbors and such, but now time and circumstance had made them opponents.

  Now the protesters started marching, slower but more steadily, and the lines of people quickly widened as they marched, as if they were trying to outflank the formation of police officers, and it seemed like they might actually do it. With the rows of marchers expanding quickly to the left and the right, the ragged crowds of demonstrators engulfed us reporters. I tried to keep up, breathing hard, chest thumping along, the knapsack bouncing on my back. Off to the left a cameraman from one of the Boston television stations fell onto the mud and grass, and his correspondent—a young man in a fine-looking suit and wearing knee-length rubber boots—struggled to get him up off the ground. Ahead and ahead the long lines moved, and a woman nearby started singing a Christmas carol, of all things: “Joy to the World.” Her voice was strong and sharp, and when she finished the first verse, she yelled out, “Sing! Come on, sing!”

  She broke into “Hark, the Herald Angels,” and other voices joined her, and through the moving mass of people, the dark line of police officers stretched out as well, and more canisters flew overhead, landing before us, bursting into tight white clouds. By now, though, most of the approaching activists had handkerchiefs over their faces, dipped in water or something else, and a few even had their own gas masks.

  The line faltered, some fell, and the wind cast away more of the gas, and they kept on moving, moving ahead. A flash of a movie memory came to me, of seeing the epic Gettysburg, of the long line of Confederate tr
oops moving up, marching, Pickett’s doomed charge against the fortified Union lines, and then there were shouts and screams as the activists drove into the line of cops.

  * * *

  Chaos. Shouts. The cops no longer looked like American police officers but like uniformed and armed oppressors, a Third World aura about them, and they pushed back, pushed back, using their batons, pushing and swinging, and there were screams and yells. Some of the activists actually broke through the open line of cops, making their way to the fence line of the Falconer nuclear power plant. They ran, but they didn’t get far, as a gate opened and reinforcements trotted out, and these had small canisters in their hands, and they sprayed in wide motions, spraying Mace into the faces and eyes of the demonstrators. Those few who had gotten beyond the police line fell or stumbled back.

  In the melee I was in, the singing had stopped, and a couple of stronger ones started chanting: “The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!”

  I moved to the left, away from a knot of protesters who were pushing and pushing up against the cops, and I slipped on some mud, and that slip is what saved me.

  * * *

  Something hard punched against my back, and there was a sharp pain near my spine, like a bee sting. I fell to the ground and the hammer blow struck me again. I fell on my face and belly, rolled over, tried to see what cop was going after me with a baton.

  I looked up, eyes tearing.

  It was no cop.

  The man was in jeans and a dirty gray windbreaker, and his face was hidden by a red bandanna. In his hands he held a thick pole of wood, and at the end of wood, hammered in, was a long metal spike. Though his face was hidden, there was merriment in his eyes, and I knew I had been with this man once before.

  Henry, the man who had seized me after my visit with Curt Chesak, ready to finish the job.

  He raised the pole with the metal spike at the end, and I kicked out, catching him in the shins, and he backed away with a yelp just as there was a soft pop! and we were engulfed in a cloud of tear gas.

  * * *

  My eyes burned shut as I rolled and crawled. I willed myself not to breathe, but I couldn’t help myself, and my lungs seized up, burning as well. The odor was bitter, pungent, and mucus started roaring through my sinuses and into my mouth. I coughed and coughed and spat and spat, and my chest burned. About me there were cries and coughs and the sounds of choking. I tried to crawl some more and buried my face into the mud and grass, the stench of the mud friendly and warm after the sharpness of the gas.

  * * *

  In a while there was a hand on my shoulder, and I pushed it away, and a woman’s voice said, “It’s all right, it’s all right. Roll over, sir. We’ll take care of you.”

  My eyes were still shut, and I rolled over, wincing at the pain between my shoulder blades and the pressure of my knapsack back there. Warm water was splashed across my face and a cloth moved it around, and more water came down and I blinked and sat up, coughed some more.

  Kneeling before me was an older heavyset woman with a soft smile, her thick gray hair pulled back in a ponytail. She was in jeans and rubber boots, and over a dark blue sweatshirt she had on a very large white T-shirt that had a homemade red cross painted on it.

  She offered me a paper cup of water, which I drank eagerly. “Thanks,” I said. “Thank you … thank you very much.”

  “Glad to help,” she said. She took the empty paper cup from my hand and folded it gently, then placed it in a large cloth sack. In front of her were some water jugs and an open satchel, with cloths and bandages and other medical supplies. Around us other people dressed in the same white T-shirt were keeping vigil with other people on the ground. At some distance away, the police officers had lined up again, at the ready.

  “Are … are you a nurse? Or a doctor?”

  She grinned, revealing a dimple on one side of her face. “No, just a volunteer. Part of the Quaker congregation from Porter. Here to observe … and to help. Are you feeling better?”

  “Yes, yes I am,” I said, and then I noticed that my butt was sopping wet. The tide was marching in. “Thank you again.”

  She started gathering her belongings and said quietly, “I saw you earlier, didn’t I?”

  “I don’t know. Did you?”

  She zippered shut her satchel, got up, and grabbed a water jug. “Yes, I’m sure of it. You were talking to a photographer about us, and what we were going to do. I’m pretty sure you made a smart-aleck comment about these people being an unorganized mob. Am I right?”

  “I’m afraid you are,” I said, my face still burning. “I’m sorry I said that about you.”

  She said, “No, that wasn’t me you were talking to. I have nothing against nuclear power. Not at all. My uncle actually works over there at the power plant. I am against the power of the state using force against people. That’s why my fellow Quakers and I are here. To help out. To bear witness. To protect the people where we can.”

  “Thanks again,” I said. I wiped at my face with both hands and saw I was standing in about three inches of water.

  As she started walking away, she pointed to the cops and the power plant and said, “If that’s the opposite of being an unorganized mob, then you can have it. I want no part of it.”

  She walked to a couple of young women sitting in the mud and water, arms around each other, crying. She knelt down and went to work. I looked around, saw little groups here and there, but no longer was there a mass of people. It had all broken up. They were slowly slogging their way back to the woods, back to their encampments. The only sign of organization was the long line of police officers patiently standing, gas masks on and batons in their hands.

  Diane was over there, Diane, my oldest and dearest friend.

  I bent down to pick up my knapsack, saw the pink ribbon—torn and muddied—and started walking away as well, the knapsack in my hands.

  * * *

  I stopped after a moment, though. I looked down at my green canvas knapsack, at the two long tears in the back. My back started stinging as well. I ran my fingers through the rips, thought back to where I had stumbled. That length of wood with the spike at the end—if it had been driven into the base of my neck, it would have severed my spinal cord and I would have been a dead man, in there among the crowds of people and the police officers and the tear gas clouds.

  Underneath my jacket was my 9 mm Beretta. Fat lot of good it had done me.

  I resumed walking and looked around me. The protesters had scattered into small groups or lines of people slogging through the rising tide, heading to the higher ground marked by the tree line. I couldn’t see Laura Toles or her son, Vic. I walked some more and heard loud voices. There. Off to the south. Kara Miles was arguing with three of her fellow activists. Hands were raised, fingers were pointed, and even this far away, I could see how scarlet Kara’s face was.

  I wondered if Diane was having a similar fight with her fellow police officers.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Some long time later, I got back to my Ford Explorer, but the movement of people and slow traffic meant the usual fifteen-minute drive to Tyler stretched almost to an hour. The protesters that had been at the salt marsh had come back to Route 1 in Falconer and were now gathering at the main gate of the power plant for some sort of vigil, and I didn’t care anymore. I just wanted to get home, which is what I did, by circling around on some back roads and getting to Tyler Beach, where there were some tourists and beachgoers, and no one carrying a sign, or a baton, or anything else.

  As I was driving down High Street, about ten minutes away from home, my cell phone rang. On the other end was a woman, and after a brief conversation, I made a U-turn and headed back into the center of town.

  * * *

  I parked at the rear of the Tyler Chronicle building and walked in past the circulation department—usually one overworked man assisted by young men or women hired on a temporary basis—and went up past the pil
es of newspapers to the newsroom, which is just a collection of battleship gray desks clustered in the center of an open office area. It was late afternoon, and Paula Quinn was at her desk, rapidly typing away on a computer terminal.

  She glanced up at me as I approached and gave me a quick smile. Her skin was pale, and it looked like she had lost some weight, but I was encouraged by the smile. “Have a seat, if you’d like,” she said. “Thanks for stopping by to check in, and—Christ, what the hell happened to you?”

  I sat down in the chair, stretching out my muddy feet. “Was in the middle of the demonstration, out in the salt marsh. Not high up with dry feet and free coffee like some journalists I know.”

  Paula resumed her typing. She had on a dark green turtleneck shirt and a gray sweater over it, and her fingers looked cracked and dry. “Yeah, lucky me and the others. Hold on—I just want to finish the story and find out what the hell happened to you.”

  “Deal,” I said.

  I took in the newsroom while Paula typed. There had been a time when the newspaper had several full-time reporters and photographers, but that time had gone away some time ago. Besides Paula, there were two other full-time reporters now, plus a number of stringers, usually bored housewives or recent college grads, all trying their hand at journalism, and usually failing.

  “There,” Paula said, slapping one more key. “Done and sent. How were things from your side of the fence?”

  “Muddy. Rough. Lots of tear gas, lots of pushing around. Number of hurt people. You?”

  “Some quiet. Like those northern congressmen and families gathering to watch the Battle of Bull Run from a distance. Looked pretty messy.”

  “It was.”