Restoration

by J. F. Krause

  Panhandle has toned down its anti-Semitic rhetoric in its broadcasts, but it knows how to use the buzzwords in order to attract followers and supporters. And they make no bones about hating Bobby. We all know what they believe in. What we don’t know for sure is how they govern themselves and where they see themselves in the future. What is the role of women? How secular is their government? Do they have any democratic institutions? The Panhandle is becoming our very own Hermit Kingdom. (The original pre-sickness Hermit Kingdom disintegrated, and the survivors are being rescued by their fellow survivors from the south.)

  Our dinner was quiet and Robert turned on all his charm. I couldn’t help feeling a little devious, but definitely not guilty as I pried as much information about Panhandle from him as I could. My husband before our divorce, Cynthia’s father, liked to pontificate, too. Just like Robert, he’d have a glass of wine or two, and take off on how to fix the world’s problems, one simplistic solution after another. If I hadn’t heard a few women do the same thing, I’d say it was a man thing. Anyway, Abe, my first husband and Cynthia’s father, was just the opposite on the political spectrum from Robert. He’d have loved today’s world, but he’d have hated Bobby almost as much as Robert does. Bobby is way too moderate, inclusive, and democratic for Abe’s taste, and the same goes for Robert’s feeling about Bobby for that matter.

  Robert filled in a few blanks. Homosexuality is banned and anyone suspected of being a pervert, Robert’s word, will be told to leave. I wonder what they’ll do to any of their children, who, despite Panhandle’s silly laws still turn out to be gay after they get older. Will they still be told to leave? Will they be allowed to leave?

  Women are expected to follow their husband’s lead. They are to love, honor, and obey, especially obey, their husbands. They’re also supposed to have lots of children as part of their husband’s ‘quiver’ or something. I had to ask Carl what in the world ‘quiver’ meant. I’m amazed they have any women at all, but evidently, there are women who are okay with that. Panhandle doesn’t like their people listening to Coalition radio and TV programs. Church is obligatory, and it appears to be some sort of amalgamation of several different conservative evangelical Christian denominations. Evolution is a lie; creation is a fact; and birth control is forbidden. Robert appears to be a regular, decent person until you disagree with him. Then, depending on what the disagreement was about, he smirks or he snarls in response. With me, Robert can be very patronizing even while he’s flirting.

  I couldn’t help comparing Robert’s behavior to Carl’s when a disagreement occurred. Carl is always considerate and willing to listen before he, tactfully, expresses his disagreement. Whereas Robert is imperious; Carl is receptive. Carl is a gem. He also disproves the old canard that the best ones are either married or gay. Or is he the exception that proves the rule? Ugh, that’s depressing.

  As I was leaving for Chicago this morning, Carl flew back to SLO for a meeting with Bobby and some think tank or other. I will miss him.

  April 15

  I had a busy week starting right after I got to Chicago. I sat in on jury selection the first day and it looks like most everyone in town will bend over backward to be selected for jury duty. We tried to find people who weren’t too eager, but, since everyone was eager, I know we let some slip through. We ended up with six men and six women. Defense appeared to avoid non-whites, young women, and any men who were very old, while the prosecution avoided younger white men who looked like they might have tattoos. What we ended up with on the jury was a bunch of forty and fifty someones of indeterminate ethnic backgrounds.

  For so many defendants, the trial seemed to be moving fairly fast. After the opening arguments, which took most of the first morning, prosecution started out by calling Troy Spitz as our first witness. Troy, despite his age, was very calm and very focused. The lead prosecutor displayed his photos on a screen for everyone to see. Troy had photographed almost every single man in the gang in the midst of doing something repugnant. Only the ones who came into Indianapolis after his escape were not shown. Methodically, Marcus Washington used Troy’s testimony to link every photo to one of the defendants. It was devastating to the defense. Of course, they had already deposed Troy so they knew what was coming. Marcus asked Troy how old he was and when he announced that he was 16, I found I wanted to giggle. Some did. Even better, Marcus asked him for his driver’s license. That was displayed on the screen along with the photos. No doubt about it: Troy was older than he looked. Then we got to the part where Troy was a member of the military team that arrested Hawkins. Troy actually had pictures of the gang member who shot Kevin as he was attending to his wound. The picture showed Kevin intent on the guy’s injury, and then he showed the guy holding a gun pointed at a shocked Kevin with blood coming out of his side. Another picture showed the moment when Hawkins had the young lady in his bed in a headlock. Then, like the one that caught Kevin in a surprised look of pain, he caught the expression of excruciating pain on Hawkins’ face when she managed to bite into the fat beneath his bicep. It was stunning. Marcus ended the testimony with a selfie Troy took to prove he was in the same room when Hawkins’ was arrested. It showed a smiling, ‘Where’s Waldo’ type face looking at the camera with Hawkins’ in the background being treated by Dr. Tanner Albright while Marco looked on. The audience laughed out loud. I’d already seen the pictures, but the last one brought tears to my eyes. I had just seen a boy become a man. Troy told his own story of captivity and of being thrown into the cell with the other two boys. He told about the executions, complete with pictures and one short film. There was no laughing taking place in the courtroom, not during that part of the testimony. Troy described his escape and how the guards shot at him and the other two boys as they ran away in the dark only to come back a few days later to act as guides for the military teams who staged the rescue at the jail and the hotel. The defense couldn’t get him out of the witness box fast enough. The other two boys, Brad and David, who truly were only 13 at the time, had also been part of the rescue teams as guides for their respective units.

  Dr. Tanner Albright was prosecution’s next witness. He set the stage and painted the picture of the how Charles Smith and Maxine Berger had called people together and then, how they were shot by two of Hawkins’ gang. Dr. Tanner was the dentist who rescued Kerry Ramsey. He was there from the beginning to the very end when he gave first aid to Kevin after he was shot, and, later, to Stanley Hawkins after he was bitten. Tanner was able to identify and place Stanley Hawkins as well as six other men at the scene of the murders of Smith and Berger. He was also able to identify Hawkins as the man giving the orders to round up the women and girls as well as to take the men into custody. There wasn’t much cross-examination for him so he was released.

  Next, we heard the story about how the men were enslaved, which gang members had beaten them, who locked them up, and so on. Almost every single man who had endured enslavement was called and testified. The defense tried to minimize the mistreatment, but it wasn’t working. They pointed out that they were only doing what they would have had to do anyway, clearing away the dead. But it was clear that the jury was getting the picture of kidnapped, enslaved men being abused, threatened, starved, and murdered.

  This took most of the week, but we were finally finished with the male victims. The women and girls haven’t started yet.

  April 22

  This was, without doubt, the worst week I’ve ever spent as an attorney. I’ve heard wives and husbands accusing their spouses of molesting their sons and daughters in order to get custody. I’ve seen battered spouses. I’ve even been called as a witness in a murder trial, but nothing can compare to the stories I heard in court this week. I’d already interviewed most of them, of course, but it was still horrific. On several occasions we actually had to adjourn so jurors could leave the room to throw-up. The defense asked for a mistrial, and I was afraid the judge might agree, but he didn’t. What a thought! Dismissing a case because they couldn’t try
it without making the juror’s sick! At least, the audience was cleared out of the courtroom before the women started testifying. Thankfully, there will be no children testifying. We have enough to convict without putting them through the horror of having to relive the pain all over again. The youngest victim to testify was a very resilient 12-year old girl.

  She had the same story of rape and physical and verbal abuse as most of the witnesses. She also had a story to tell of being dangled, naked and by her feet, from one of the upper story balconies by two men who taunted her and laughed as she begged and pleaded for mercy. Eventually, she was brought back onto the balcony, but the lesson had been learned: no more resistance. Amazingly, Troy had captured the whole thing on film from one of the rooms at a slight angle from about fifty feet away. He steadied the camera on a table and caught most of it, albeit without sound. The men’s faces are readily identifiable as was the girl’s face. Her private parts were obscured for the trial but it was clear she was naked, terrified, and very much a victim. At the defense table, the two men involved smirked. Personally, I think their buffoonish behavior sealed theirs and every other defendant’s fate at that very moment.

  I’m not going to share any more of the trial and testimony. Any readers can refer to the transcripts from the trial if they like. I pity the poor court reporter. Bobby assures me that my reports will go straight into the archives he’s keeping for future generations. Meanwhile, I’m mentally trashed after hearing the testimonies, and I don’t want to think about them anymore, and I certainly don’t want to write about them. I’ve already reported to Bobby, verbally, everything he wanted to hear. He didn’t want to hear even as much detail as I’ve shared here. Sometimes I think Bobby’s too gentle to be in such a serious position. And then I think, “Thank God, Bobby’s so gentle”.

  April 27

  We finished the women’s testimonies a couple of days ago. During cross-examination, Emily took a very light-handed approach to the witnesses. She didn’t even cross-examine the younger ones but, instead, concentrated on trying to elicit sympathy for a group of men who had lost their wives and families to the sickness. Undermining this tactic was the fact that everyone in the room had just experienced the same losses, and they didn’t enslave, rape, and murder their fellow survivors.

  The sympathy defense was put to rest when Emily called a woman named Mary O’Donnell as a witness. Emily tried to get sympathy from Mary O’Donnell who had been used as a cook. Emily asked if she had lost her family, and she had. We learned that she had no one left among her family, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. Mary O’Donnell had been abused less than most, certainly among the women, and that may have been why Emily singled her out, not wanting to have a witness break into tears while being cross-examined. Marcus, during cross was as gentle as he could be, but Mary’s story was still heart breaking to hear. Mary’s story was everyone’s story. Sympathy never really took off as a defense, not when we all suffered so terribly, and not when the defendants clearly showed so little remorse for their behavior. I’m so thankful that Cynthia survived and that she never had to go through anything even distantly related to what the women of Indianapolis went through. How I love my beautiful daughter right now.

  Carl is back in Chicago from SLO. He got to hear the last afternoon of the prosecution’s witnesses. Even without hearing the very worst of the stories, what he heard was bad enough. He was visibly shaken when we met after adjournment today. We went back to our room and had a stiff drink before dinner.

  He slowly decompressed, and I heard what he had been working on for the last several days. Carl is part of the think tank that is trying to reinvent an economy for our communities. Right now, despite having a nearly endless supply of factories, we don’t really have a manufacturing base, and other than a few very basic things like cheese and some local bakeries we aren’t doing much in the way of creating new food items. We have farms that are starting to produce a lot of fresh fruits, vegetables, and nuts, as well as dairy and egg products. California is already producing lots of vegetables and some fruits, but almost everyone will be producing most or all of these products for themselves soon so we don’t expect much trade in these items, at least not until winter when we anticipate getting a lot of them from the southern hemisphere. Currently, about the only things that are transported between communities are some of the citrus fruits, and some of the different varieties of cheese and some of California’s vegetable production. We’re getting started producing different types of fuels, but a little bit goes a long way when your production facilities are geared for billions and your population is only about half a million. There really isn’t much reason for us to even have a land transportation system when about the only things we’re shipping from place to place is cheese and oranges. Everything a large community can eat in a year can be flown in on a few re-commissioned FedEx jets. In the not too distant future that will change because we will be transporting fuel to replace what we have that’s gone bad.

  Bobby keeps telling us, and I think enough people are starting to understand, that we may not need the railway lines and highways now, but we will need them eventually, and it’s a lot easier to maintain and repair than to build from scratch. He wants people to be engaged in commerce so we have a need to keep the bridges from collapsing. He wants us to keep planes in the sky and ships on the ocean for the regular people to use. Bobby frequently tells us that if we are just salvaging and maintaining without a vision for the future, a vision that people can really relate to other than simply ‘we may need it in a generation or two’, eventually people will just say screw it; I don’t want to get out of bed anymore.

  To emphasize this point, we are seeing an uptick in suicides again. There was a spate of suicides right after the sickness, and then we had a lull. As a matter of fact, before Carl and I left for Bloomington, there was a suicide in SLO. A guy named Michael Kelly hanged himself in his garage. We all knew him, at least casually, although Avery Wells knew him better. He’d been on the sanitation work group with Avery. We’ve had three suicides in SLO since we settled there.

  That’s when Bobby summoned the economy re-inventors and also a group of psychiatrists, psychologists, and family counselors. They started out working separately, but after a couple of days, they started to work together in smaller integrated clusters. They came up with a number of proposals. Hopefully, some of them will work since doing nothing isn’t working.

  Carl described the newest economic proposal by referencing Bloomington. Bloomington is becoming a destination city. People are slowly starting to come to Bloomington just for the live concerts. Next week, Bloomington’s newly formed symphony orchestra will have its debut concert. The symphony’s been adding new musicians almost daily since it was decided to make Bloomington the home of the North American symphony orchestra. The musicians group, or as they call themselves, the Classically Trained Musicians Guild chose Bloomington and since then, it has simply burst into existence as literally the serious music capital of the continent, and probably the world.

  What the economic think tank is proposing, using Bloomington as a model, is to make tourism one of the initial foundations of the new monetary system. People work to earn credit toward vacation privileges. College students will work during their break times at hotels and food courts and so on to make sure tourist destinations can handle the visitors. Everyone earns the right to travel to destinations of their choice by doing the chores our society needs done. In their spare time, something we currently have a lot of, people can join sports teams, musical groups, drama groups, dance groups, and what have you. Then, we coordinate a series of festivals and competitions so people can participate with each other. Hopefully, by connecting with each other through our hobbies and passions, we will cut down on the isolation that leads, in part, to the rising tide of suicides.

  Carl described how many local communities in the past were kept completely afloat by tourism. We don’t need to keep ourselves afloat in quite the same w
ay, but we do need to give ourselves a legitimate reason to go to work everyday. With no need for money, and no obvious, in your face, reason for maintaining roads and factories that are seldom used, we have to provide a motivation to work. Everything sounded good when Carl talked about it, but whether they can make it happen in our current world is another thing.

  Carl talked about making Manhattan a theater center again, and restarting the live music scene in Austin. Of course, Hollywood is already trying to get going again since there were lots of survivors in California with ties to the old Hollywood. It would seem that TV and filmmaking were much bigger industries in LA than most of us realized. Atlanta, too.

  Nashville has already been restarting on its own, too, and with a little encouragement and advertisement on the want ads blog, the ranks of excellent amateur and even a small but very influential cadre of surviving professional performers is really beginning to swell. The way Carl and his fellow planners see it, now that people have time to indulge in their passions, why not encourage them, and then coordinate a series of events and competitions. People work to earn work credits to use to travel since everything else is free; they participate in creative and recreation groups and teams; they hold festivals; they attend festivals. It’s a different type of idea, but we have to do something. If I’m honest with myself, I’m enjoying seeing what is happening around the country. Maybe enough people will buy into this to make it work. I’ve always wanted to attend the steel pan music festival in Trinidad and Tobago, and maybe, one day, I will. I think that’s the sort of thing the group is talking about.