Amerika

by Brauna E. Pouns

  Will Milford was helping some of the survivors search through the wrecked dwellings for bodies or whatever valuables could be salvaged. Alethea was helping Alan, cutting her sheets into bandages and applying them to bleeding men and women. All she knew was what she had learned in a first-aid course, years before, but her efforts were better than notMng. She thought she must be in shock. She could not believe that human beings, even Helmut Gurtman, had caused this senseless slaughter; it was easier to think of it as a natural disaster, like a flood or tornado.

  And yet she knew that Helmut had done it, out of hate, out of a need for revenge, out of some reservoir of malice that would never be totally understood.

  The others did not see Amanda arrive at the camp. She walked in alone and soon her face mirrored the devastation she saw. She had been here before, and done what good she could, but she was not prepared for this horror, so far beyond her ability to correct. She saw the crushed body of a woman she recognized, recoiled in shock, then began digging through the wreckage of a leveled shack. Tearing at the debris, she uncovered the mangled body of a child. Her face blooded, her features distorted by the final moments of terror, the lifeless girl was not immediately recognizable. But after a moment Amanda realized that it was Dierdre, the girl who had come to her yard that morning.

  Amanda held the child close, as if her warmth could give life, and then she began to stagger toward the hospital.

  Alethea saw her coming and ran to meet her. She reached for the child, then slowly drew back her hand.

  “I’ve got her,” Amanda whispered.

  Alethea looked from the child’s still face to Amanda’s haunted eyes. “I’ll . . . I’ll get someone,” she said.

  She returned in a moment with Alan Drummond. His face was weary, his white coat soaked with blood. When he spoke, it was with an odd formality. “Thank you for coming, Amanda.”

  “Hie baby . . . she needs ...”

  He shook his head; he too was in shock. It did not keep him from working, but it kept him from thinking of anything but the patient before him. “She needs nothing, Amanda. She’s gone.” He reached out and touched Amanda’s cheek.

  Amanda turned and started up the hill, the dead baby clutched in her arms.

  “You’d better stop her,” Alan said. “She’s in shock.”

  Alethea looked at him. She thought she loved this man, for his goodness, and yet she rejected his advice. “Why?” she said, more to herself than to Alan. “Why the hell not take the corpse to town? Let the townspeople have a dose of reality.” She ran into their battered little hospital. “Come on,” she cried. “Anybody who can walk. Get up. Help the others. We’ll go to town.” She ran through the camp, summoning others. “If you’re not hurt, help those who are,” she told them. “We’ve got to go where people can help us. We can’t stay here and die.”

  She came to Dieter, sitting on the ground beside his crushed trailer, the body of his dead wife nearby, covered by a blanket. “Come on,” she said. “Please.” He shook his head slowly. “No. I’ll stay.”

  Soon she had most of the survivors, more than a hundred of them, on their feet, starting to move. They stretched out along the road for more than a mile. Amanda still led the way, the small body of Dierdre clutched awkwardly to her. Alethea helped a girl who used a tree limb for a crutch. Will held one end of a makeshift stretcher on which an unconscious woman was sprawled.

  The walk seemed endless, surreal. It was dusk when the first marchers reached the town, not sure what might await them there but believing it must be better than the hell they had left behind.

  Peter climbed into the back of Samanov’s limousine for the ride to the White House. Marion sat between him and the general. As the gentle countryside flashed by, Samanov said, “There is much to do and little time. You must force changes beyond what you feel your countrymen can tolerate.”

  “You ask a lot,” Peter said. “They still love America. You want them to forget it.”

  “The alternative is worse,” Samanov said. “Your

  leadership can save your people. Marion will help. You will be a good team. What was it Andrei called you? Ms. Inside and Mr. Outside.”

  “Is that my job? A front man?”

  “Peter, I truly do want to help you,” Marion said. “You may not believe it, but I do. Give me a chance.” Peter forced a smile and moved slowly to what really was on his mind. “General, I’ve been trying all day to reach my wife,” he said. “They can’t get through. I don’t understand.”

  Petya Samanov smiled. “A minor matter,” he said. “Don’t worry; I’ll take care of it.”

  The procession of exiles continued; passing houses as dark and silent as death, Alethea began to wonder if the townspeople would have the decency to acknowledge them at all .

  “Wait!”

  Alethea turned. A woman stood in her doorway. Mrs. Harrison, a seamstress. She rushed down her walk into the street. “Let me help her,” Mrs. Harrison said, and put her arm around the woman Alethea had been half carrying. Without saying a word, she gently guided the woman toward her home.

  Alethea looked around: she saw the door to another house open and a man and a woman hurry forth. By the time she reached the comer, a half dozen of the worst-injured Exiles had been taken in.

  Amanda reached the courthouse steps with the dead baby still in her arms. Ward met her there. Several members of the county council—called to an emergency meeting—stood behind the deputy. Herb Lister, red-faced with anger, glared at her and at the procession of Exiles behind her.

  “Amanda, let me take her,” Ward said.

  But grief-shocked, her eyes glazed and her expression vacant, Amanda would not hand over her ghastly bundle to the deputy. Instead she turned to Lister, who was too appalled to retreat from her slow but relentless advance. She pressed the corpse, already stiffening and misshapen, into his arms and backed away.

  Early that evening, three hundred miles west of Milford, Justin reached a sign that said;

  Caution—Border Central Administrative Area Prepare for Inspection

  Justin wheeled off the road and climbed a ridge until, lying flat, he could see the distant checkpoint. Gates blocked the road and a high wire fence stretched off in both directions. He studied the movements of the soldiers and trucks and soon realized they were putting up more fencing, extending it as far as the eye could see—-sealing off the border between Nebraska and what had once been Colorado and what was now officially known as the Semi-Autonomous Zone.

  Justin waited for darkness and then he began to ride south along the fence. Crickets rasped and the sharp air of the high plains stung his face. TTie fence went on for mile after mile. He rode with his lights off and followed the fence by moonlight. The terrain was rough and he went slowly. After a while he noticed the plowed earth on the other side of the fence. He passed one sign that, said danger—land mines but he didn’t need the sign to tell him what the troops had done. Anyone who wanted to could cut through a fence in this isolated country but would then have to face the uncertainty of that plowed earth. The sign might even be a bluff-—who could say?

  By midnight he guessed he’d traveled a hundred miles or more and still the fence stretched on. It was time to make a decision. He couldn’t exist in this wilderness forever. He had to get back to the road, get started west again—that, or turn back in defeat. He stopped at a point where the fence dipped down into a gully and where he might not be so visible. He took from Ms pack a blasting charge he’d stolen before he left Milford. He placed it carefully under the fence, lit the fuse, and raced back behind a rock.

  The explosion must have echoed for miles. When the dust settled, he saw the gaping hole in the fence. Grinning, he kicked his Harley into life and hurtled through the opening.

  Justin pumped one fist above his head, partly in defiance and partly to prime his nerve as he picked up speed. From a distance, in that cold night, he was a tiny figure, cowboylike, against the vast landscape of the west. He sped
on, across the plowed earth, confident now, proud, ready to resume his odyssey, and then there was another blast, and Justin and his Harley were lifted high into the air. When they came back to earth, one of the Harley’s wheels kept spinning for a long time, but the boy was silent and still.

  For a second day, Peter could not get through to his home. He went to the White House that morning and even the operators there could not reach Milford, Nebraska. Some local disturbance, they explained. Peter choked back a moment’s fear.

  He had other worries. General Samanov wanted him to address Congress that very afternoon. He had protested, but Samanov had said, “You do sot fully appreciate the importance of your role. Right now you are mote important than the president, by far.” Everything being relative, he might have added.

  Peter was baffled by what he should say. Samanov did not much seem to care. The clearer vision seemed to come from Andrei. “Peter, you must stress that decentralization can work, that we are entering a new era with new challenges, and Heartland can lead the way,” the younger Russian said. ‘"That, I suggest, is your message.”

  Peter wasn’t sure he believed it. He needed time to think, to focus on this speech they wanted. He borrowed a spiral notebook from a secretary. They offered him an office-—-“Take the Oval Office if it will inspire you,” Andrei said—but he declined and went for a walk instead.

  He left the White House and started along Seventeenth Street, toward the Mall. It was a bright, crisp day and he savored the- morning air. At first he found himself walking aimlessly, then realized he had a destination all along.

  He walked on past the Vietnam Memorial. He had been there before and thought it deeply moving. Its critics were right to hate it, he thought. It was the most eloquent possible indictment of their folly-—but he did not want to ponder that great black wall today.

  Instead he strode toward the massive temple that was Abraham Lincoln’s memorial.

  A guard saluted sharply. Peter climbed the stairs and entered the rotunda, read the words inscribed on its walls, then gazed at the man himself.

  Peter tried to imagine what Lincoln would have done had he been in Peter Bradford’s position. Lincoln, a rough and eloquent idealist: the complete American.

  He thought of Amanda. He desperately wanted her advice, because for all her loathing of politics, her thoughts fell naturally into humane and sincere expression.

  He took out his notebook and began to write. In his mind he was not writing notes for a speech, but a letter to his wife. Perhaps he would even mail it. He looked again at Lincoln and began to write: “You can’t look at those eyes and not think what being an American has meant.”

  He shook his head, then continued. “Now there’s an end to it. Soon there will be no America, at least as we’ve known it. It will be history, distorted, just as Lincoln has been—the man who kept the Union together, now embraced by those who would tear it apart.”

  Halfway down the steps, Peter saw the man who’d been following him, some sort of bodyguard; perhaps now he was reporting on this odd behavior. Peter ignored him; this intruder did not matter at all.

  “I need to talk to you, Am. Things are moving too fast. Maybe there’s still time to stop. It’s hard to know what’s right. I wonder about myself. The choices I make could affect millions of people; what if they’re the wrong ones?”

  He looked east on the Mall, to the Capitol, where he was supposed to speak that afternoon. What could he say that would have any meaning to those dispirited politicians, the ones who still dreamed of freedom and the ones who had given up hope? Did he, or Nebraska, really matter to them? Or was it all an elaborate charade?

  He began to write again.

  “It seems that I’m about to become part of a system that some future generation will rebel against. Will I be hated by people who never knew me, who don’t understand why I’m doing what I must do? Old truths, new generations; maybe freedom is something you can’t inherit.”

  Peter sighed, wrote “With Love to Amanda from Peter” at the bottom of the page, and hurried down the steps. His bodyguard silently fell in behind him.

  The SSU convoy roared into the Milford courthouse square. Soldiers jumped out and began to set up roadblocks. Snow flurries swirled around them. A dark-haired officer, followed by five heavily armed men, marched to Herb ’n Betty’s Cafe and kicked open the door. His men followed him inside, their weapons at the ready.

  Betty was pouring a cup of mock coffee for a man in one of the booths. Startled, she dropped the pot. “See what you made me do!” she cried. “Get outta here.”

  The officer looked at her and laughed.

  “Go on,” she yelled. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, anyway?”

  “Cerrado,” he said, loud enough so everyone in the room turned to watch. “Curfew.”

  “Listen, don’t you tell me . . .” she began. Bill Grey, the man she had been serving coffee, stepped to her side.

  “Better do what they say,” he warned.

  “Out. Everybody out,” the officer said. He was handsome, in a sullen way, and there was no hesitation in him. His men lined the room and began to prod people out the door. Only Betty held back.

  “You. Outside.”

  “It’s my place,” she raged.

  He shoved her roughly out the door. Outside, her customers were being loaded in the back of a truck.

  The officer was trying to turn off the faded neon “Herb ’n Betty’s Cafe” sign. “La luz,” he said. “Off. Out.”

  “It don’t turn off, turkey,” Betty said. “It’s been on for thirty years and it’s gonna stay on.”

  The officer cursed in his native tongue and gestured toward one of his men. With the butt of the gun, the underling smashed the neon. Gas hissed, the light flickered, then finally went out.

  Betty, still in her apron, screamed at the officer, but his soldiers lifted her into the truck. When the Cuban finished battering the neon sign, he gazed angrily at his prisoners.

  “Cerrado,” he said. “Curfew.”

  Betty beat on the back of the truck in frustration. Already soldiers were starting to board up her cafe. The truck started to move, carrying the dazed prisoners away; gentle snow surrounded it as it eased down the street.

  It was only an hour later that Ward burst into the county council chambers. Helmut Gurtman was there, with Herb Lister and two other council members, Fred Tate, the owner of the hardware store, and Mel Austin, the town’s leading lawyer. Ward hadn’t taken two steps when two SSU guards grabbed him.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Ward demanded. “Get off me.”

  He yanked free. Helmut nodded and the soldiers stepped back. Ward stood there a moment, trying to put it together. He regained a little of his composure and walked toward Helmut.

  “Your tanks are blocking traffic,” Ward raged. “And what the hell do you mean, arresting people for drinking coffee?”

  “Settle down, Ward,” advised Mel Austin, the lawyer.

  “As of 0800 hours this morning, the town is blockaded,” Helmut said. “No one is permitted in or out. An absolute curfew is in effect.”

  Ward and the German were nose to nose. Ward was almost as tall as Gurtman and twice as broad. “You have no right to do this,” he said. “No authority to bring your troops in here.”

  “The actions are at the request of the Milford County Council,” Gurtman declared.

  “Bullshit,” Ward shot back.

  “It’s true,” Herb Lister said. “There’s been a flagrant violation of the law. Exiles are threatening to take over the town. Established authority is either absent or in dereliction of duty.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Ward demanded. “That you acted when Peter Bradford and Alan Drummond weren’t here to oppose you?”

  “It’s all quite legal,” Mel Austin said.

  “Did you not lead a group of townspeople to the exile camp in violation of the curfew?” Gurtman demanded.

  “An illegal
act of defiance,” Herb Lister said.

  “An act of decency,” Ward said. He turned to Mel and Fred. “What are you two doing, being part of

  this?”

  “It’s legal,” Mel said.

  “Be realistic,” Fred said. “What choice have we

  got?”

  “What choice?” Ward raged. “We can stand up to this Nazi, and show a little guts—”

  “You’re a deputy,” Herb Lister said. “You enforce the law as we define it, or you’re out.”

  Helmut said calmly, “Your choice is simple. Either you and your men enforce the curfew or we will do it alone.”

  Ward stared at the German in rage and frustration. He was outgunned. It was as simple as that.

  “If there’s no more business at the moment,” Helmut said with taunting sincerity. “I would say this meeting’s adjourned.”

  They drove from the White House to the Capitol in two limousines, the president’s and Samanov’s. Peter rode with Samanov, and he was not unaware of the symbolism involved, however jovially the general had issued the invitation.

  The drive up Pennsylvania Avenue, complete with motorcycle escort, took only a minute or two. Peter was struck by how few people were on the streets, and with what disinterest they regarded the passing of their leaders.

  He was speaking to a joint session of Congress— members of both the House and Senate meeting in the vast House chamber, with the president, the vice-president, members of the Supreme Court, and other dignitaries looking on.

  The speaker of the house, a bony, crafty old buzzard, shouted out his introduction—“a new leader, a new generation, the first governor-general of the Heartland region, my good friend Mr. Peter Bradford”—and the sergeant at arms escorted Peter to the podium. He noted how the PPP loyalists applauded enthusiastically, while the other members only gently touched their hands together.