by Julia Stoops
“This is it, guys!” says Brian, his voice shrill with excitement. “Ignition commences.”
Faint crackling sounds come from inside the barn, then Brian is crashing through the sagebrush, going, “Oh wow oh shit oh wow!” Then everything falls quiet.
Nelson’s heart starts to thump again. Above him float constellations, but through the viewfinder there is only black. Nelson presses the record button until it gives way with a tiny click. It’s a negligible movement under the magnificent wheel of the sky.
The horses shouldn’t have to run past fire, for god’s sake. Sure, they’ll be free. But already their social structures are messed up from being captured and corralled, and now they’ll be extra traumatized on top of it. And here he is, standing in the desert, nameless to these people whose intentions are so noble and whose tactics are so messed up.
The crackling in the barn gets louder, and the first splinter of yellow appears through the wall. Then the smell of smoke hits Nelson, and the oily diesel smell of napalm. The fire’s in the viewfinder now, a flower on the side of the barn, then whoomf it goes, and it is like something in a movie, bursting flames and roiling smoke, and metal hinges squealing, the Brigaders whooping and yelling, and the horses galloping, pounding the ground, dust clouds billowing, horses black on yellow, light fracturing through their legs.
Nelson is breathing fast. He pulls back from the viewfinder. The world is hot and lit up like an orange circus. The air stinks and roars. The smell of sage and dust and horses and napalm stings his eyes, fills his hair, invades his clothes. Nelson’s sleeve is orange. His hand is orange. His fingernails are orange. Beside him, Fetzer is standing clear and sharp head to toe. His shaved scalp shines in the firelight. His head is down like he’s searching—searching the ground for a jewel, but his eyes are closed tight.
Oh god, the smell of napalm. This must be a nightmare for him.
Nelson reaches to put a hand on Fetzer’s orange shoulder, but Fetzer turns away and heads for the car. Nelson lifts his face to the smoky copper sky. Heat presses on his bare throat.
This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. His life. Not like this.
A single star blinks through the smoke. Then the star is obscured, and a tear slides onto Nelson’s hot cheek.
“Fucking amazing!” says Jen in his ear. “Burn, baby, burn!”
2: FETZER
The Maryville firebombing was the start. But what blew up in our faces that year was bigger than that blaze.
It was early June 2002. In our cheap motel room at dawn, we were sitting in the dull light of the TV and the one lamp that worked. Through a chink in the curtains the new day was coming with no sleep to mark it from the old one. Jen was repairing a headset, and Nelson was at the desk with a camera plugged in, playing his tape over. I had my tired ass on a bed, leaning up against pillows, flipping channels till I found the news. The firebombing wasn’t news yet. Probably someone had seen the smoke and driven up there, but it wasn’t on TV.
Jen cut a tiny piece of electrical tape. “That was one fine burn. My-tee fine.”
“Pretty sure it was my last,” I said.
Jen looked at me from under her hair.
“Tired of doing favors for them.” I said. “About time they figured out how to document their own goddamn actions.”
Jen put down the headset. “Dude, seriously? You trust EFB kids to produce quality video?”
I was not in the mood for Jen’s perfectionism. “Right now, I ache all over, I can still smell napalm despite the hot shower, and I spent all last night being told what to think by a jerk who was in diapers when I was founding co-ops. Either we stop doing this, or we do it our way.”
Jen and I had this argument from time to time. A few years earlier we’d agreed to step back from direct action in order to devote ourselves to reporting it. Achieve a little distance, as it were. Me, I was ready to get out, anyhow. Direct action is best left to the young and energetic. And Nelson, he was never a confident saboteur. Jen, though, I knew she missed the excitement.
Jen muttered, “We’re so fucking detached. Always watching, never doing.”
Nelson stared down at his hands. Mr. Clean, as we sometimes called him, had uncharacteristic black under his nails. His tie hung over the back of a chair. At least he hadn’t worn the damn thing to the firebombing, but it was highly likely to be going back on after he took a shower. He unplugged the camera and started packing it away. In a tired voice he said, “We’re journalists. We are trying to effect change, but we’re doing so as journalists.”
I wasn’t really listening to Nelson; at the time I was more interested in arguing with Jen. I said, “What do you mean, ‘detached’? We’re at every damn action we can afford to travel to.”
Jen rolled her eyes.
I pointed the remote at her. “And I’m not putting up with that kind of crap again. Ever.”
“Jeez,” said Jen. “Let it go. Those guys were noobs. We’ll probably never see them again.”
“Bullshit like keeping those poor goddamn horses there till the fire was going.”
“Well, yeah,” Jen conceded. She grabbed her hair the way she does, like grabbing an orange cat that’s trying to get away. “That did suck.” She wound her hair into a knot, picked up the headset stem, and went back to wrapping tape around a wire.
Nelson looked at me with those big and gentle eyes. “The napalm didn’t help, huh?”
I turned back to the TV. “We’re all tired. Let’s just drop it.” But I could feel those eyes on me. He reminded me of Father Mulcahy on M.A.S.H. right then, like an earnest young chaplain, wanting to make things right.
We’d documented an arson, sure, but I mark that day as the beginning of the year everything went up in flames. So when I look at Nelson today, aiming those sincere eyes out at the world from a press conference, or sitting with his tie loosened and his shirtsleeves rolled up at the dinner table on his rare evenings at home, I can hardly believe that year happened. And sometimes to remind myself I look for the crooked fingers on his left hand.
“War wound,” I’d said once, and he snapped at me that it was disrespectful to soldiers who’d seen real combat. I reminded him I’d been in Vietnam, so was entitled to make the judgment.
But anyhow, back in the motel in Maryville, actual sun was coming in through the chink in the curtains and Jen was throwing her CD player and her magazines and her underwear into a bag. She’s a big girl, but not in the feminine areas. She wore these sports bras that had a flattening effect on her already debatable chest. I got up off my butt and started picking up the burrito wrappers and banana peels. The words came over the TV and we all stopped and turned.
“… first articulation of a doctrine of preemptive strike,” the anchor said. Then a clip of el Presidente’s speech at West Point the day before, dropping the quiet bombshell: “Our security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives.”
He meant Iraq, of course.
“No way,” said Nelson. “That’s against international law. He’d have to get it past the House. The Senate.” Nelson’s betrayed eyes looked up at me. “The U.N. wouldn’t let him. Right?”
“Let’s hope the hell not,” I said.
Jen stabbed her toothbrush into her bag and announced, “The Empire strikes first.”
We were heading north out of Maryville, and there was a cop parked near the freeway on-ramp. Just a speed trap, but it stopped our conversation. Eyes forward, I eased on the gas like we drove up that particular ramp every day of our lives, three oddballs in the front bench seat of an ’85 Oldsmobile Toronado. At least that’s what the exterior would have you believe: inside it was biofuel and custom electronics, but you wouldn’t know it by looking.
Big inhale. Blinker on to merge. Big exhale when we were around the curve, then we set out for real—across the flat, dry landscape of northeast California.
“Goo
d thing we put on the Californicator tags,” said Jen.
“Good thing,” I said. I got the needle to 70, and sagebrush and rocks and the occasional saltpan passed us by as we barreled north toward the Oregon border. We were sleepless, and that damned oily burnt smell hung around even though we all had on clean clothes. The ones from the op were in two layers of black plastic bags in the trunk. If we were smart, we would’ve dumped the bags, but we were too poor to throw clothes away, and anyway, we’d have to be super smart to deal with dumping. Fingerprints on the bag, buttons, zippers. Too much to deal with. Could’ve burned them, but fires in a flat, dry landscape tend to attract attention. Like the one we videotaped. It was hitting the news right then on the car radio.
“Arson was the probable cause”—Jen turned it up—“of a blaze at the Bureau of Land Management’s Wild Horse and Burro facility near Maryville, California, says Lassen County Sheriff Craig Griffith. No one was hurt in the early morning attack, but a barn, office trailer, and part of a corral were destroyed. Gates were opened, a fifty-foot section of fence was cut, and all one hundred and forty-eight wild horses escaped. Initial investigations indicate the attack was deliberate, with remains of incendiary devices found on the scene. Authorities suspect a radical environmental group carried out the attack. At this time no one has come forward to claim responsibility, and police have no suspects in the case.”
Nelson sighed. “It has got to go in the next show.”
Jen said, “Uh, yeah? Or did I miss a memo? Are we now documenting actions for the sheer ebullient fun of it?”
Nelson waved an annoyed hand. “No, I mean that thing from Bush about a preemptive strike.”
Jen and I agreed. Problem was, our radio show was then like it is now: last Saturday of every month. We’d have to wait nearly four weeks to discuss it on the air.
Cars passed us. Trucks. I kept the needle just under 70.
Our house was empty when we got home. We were sitting in the kitchen and grumbling about where was Franky when he was supposed to be watching the place. Turned out he was getting groceries and sweeping the streets for strays. Franky was a good kid—helped us out with food and computer discs and toilet paper, bless his generous trust-fund heart—but he took some management. While he was picking up soymilk and cans of beans, somewhere in his pretty-boy head he made the decision to pluck Deirdre off a bus bench and bring her back to our place. Franky thought she’d only stay a night. But if you knew how many locks we had on our door and how hospitality-challenged we were, you’d understand why we weren’t at all happy with him when he showed up smiling and contrite with a skinny Irish girl in tow. Despite the brown paper bags bulging with gifted groceries.
3: JEN
So unbelievable. We get home from a big firebombing only to play host-with-the-most with some random stranger. What the hell was Franky thinking? He’s a goddamn house sitter, not a hotel manager. Of course Nelson, being ambassador from planet Dork, is into it right away. And Fetzer caved in like five minutes! Bunch of rescuers.
The woman Frank so generously invited into our headquarters stands in the doorway, looking around like she’s hungry and there might be a buffet conveniently laid out somewhere among the filing cabinets and desks.
“Stay there,” I tell her. Last thing I need is her snooping through our stuff.
Fetzer stands in the middle of the basement with his gut sticking out and his hands on his hips. “She can go over here,” he says, and walks down to the end, like we’re supposed to follow. There’s that old camp cot against the wall. He eyes the pipes along the ceiling and strokes his chin. “We could string wire, rig up curtains. Out of sheets.”
“What for?” I say.
His voice goes quiet as I get closer. “She’ll want privacy. I have a feeling she’ll be here more than one night.”
“Nope. No way.”
He picks up a stack of folders off the cot, then looks back at her leaning in the doorway with her arms folded tight. “She’s sick, see?”
His Dorkiness comes over all cow-eyed with concern. “Franky’s making tea. Does she seem kind of unwell to you?”
I yank the folders out of Fetzer’s hands. “What the hell is wrong with you guys? She could be a fucking Fed.”
Fetzer yanks them back. “Keep your voice down. And I seriously doubt even a Fed would go to the trouble of faking that sweaty pallor.”
Nelson whispers, “What’s wrong with you, Jen? Have some compassion for people for a change.”
“What? You think ’cause I’m female I should be all nurturing? Well, let me fill you in, guys. ‘People’ doesn’t include foreign total strangers who follow Franky home. For all we know she staked him out while we were away, and this whole thing’s a set-up.”
“Listen,” says Fetz. “She didn’t follow him, he brought her. I don’t like this any more than you do, but she’s sick and alone and I don’t feel right sending her back out there.”
“Seriously? Doting on this girl just ’cause she’s weedy looking? If I turned up on the doorstep, think you’d wanna rescue me?”
Nelson bends down to pick up a pile of Forest Alliance back issues. His stupid tie drapes across the magazines. He says, “Of course we would. Now, she needs a pillow and some bedding. And a lamp would be nice.”
“Dude,” I say. I am lost for words. “Sometimes—I wonder what planet you’re on.”
But they rig up the sheets and put blankets on the cot, and I have to admit it looks seriously cozy. Kind of like a fort when you’re a kid.
Fetzer heads upstairs. Franky gives the woman a mug of tea and brings her over. Her hair’s really greasy—she gets credit at least for not being gorgeous. She looks at the fort and says, “It’s grand,” in that accent.
Nelson gives her a dorky smile and says, “I hope it’s comfortable.”
This is such a waste of bandwidth. I grab the flashlight he’s holding and point it at the dark end of the basement. “Bathroom’s down there. Provided as is, without warranty. The light switch is hard to find, so you’ll need this.”
I toss her the flashlight and she fumbles it against her bony chest. Physically, you could not find a girl more opposite of me. Short. Thin. Straight black hair.
Nelson shoots me a pissy look. “We’ll be upstairs. Top floor. Let us know if you need anything,” and before he and Frank leave me alone with her, I go around and shut down the Crusher and the PowerBook. The other computers are off already, but the servers have to stay on. She better not mess with the servers. I also lock the filing cabinets and the archive cupboards, and grab the Maryville tapes and the big box of discs. Notice how the guys leave it up to me to take care of the security of our data? Fuck this annoying shit.
On the top-floor landing Fetzer’s waiting for me. He grabs the tapes that are slipping off the box in my arms. “This is the last damn thing we need.”
I want to drop the box on his foot. “Then why’d you say yes so fast?”
“C’mon. What else could we do?”
“Say no.”
Franky comes out of the spare room and pushes past us into the bathroom. “Don’t be mean, guys,” he says. “She’s nice.”
Fetzer lifts an eyebrow. “Girl looks like Wednesday Addams. Don’t tell me you’re into her.”
“Hmm, not like that,” says Franky. “I can stay again tonight, huh?” He concentrates on squeezing the toothpaste tube in the middle.
“Course,” says Fetzer. Then he points a tape at him. “But listen, Saint Francis, no more bringing home strays, okay?”
Franky just whales on his teeth. Keeping them super white must be part of the job description. This is worse than that Mexican kid he brought home last year. Turned out the guy was expecting sex. Fetz gave him twenty bucks and told him to scram.
“I mean it,” says Fetz. “The wrong person in here could seriously jeopardize some folks.”
“Seriously,” I say, “our files have people the FBI would love to get to know. Those people trust us.”
> Franky pulls out his toothbrush and whines through foam. “Oh, come on. She’s harmless. You’d do the same. She just got into Portland, and half her stuff was stolen.” He stares down at his toothbrush. “Sitting there with that one little backpack. She looked so sad.”
Fetzer heads for his room. “Unteachable,” he says. The door closes behind him.
We should’ve left five minutes ago. Franky’s at the gym, and nothing’s stirring behind the fort sheets.
“Maybe she bailed,” I say.
Fetzer peeks through the fort sheets. “Still asleep.”
“Well, don’t wake her up,” Nelson whispers. “She obviously needs it.”
I say, “No way she’s staying here alone. She could smash the servers.”
There’s a sound behind the curtain, and Fetzer peeks in again. Then he yanks the sheet back, and the girl’s leaning over the edge of the cot, puking on the floor. Which is pretty much the grossest thing you could witness at eight in the morning. The puddle engulfs a rusty paper clip. She coughs. Fetzer tosses trash out of a metal wastebasket and gets the rim of it under her chin just in time for another hurl.
We’re supposed to be deep in the Willamette National Forest by lunchtime. The room reeks. This is so unbelievable.
Fetzer looks up at me. “Jen!”
Nelson’s got his hand on her back. She heaves again. Fetzer keeps holding the wastebasket.
“What?”
“Get a towel, for chrissake!”
After they clean up the mess and bring a glass of water, the girl wipes her mouth with her sleeve and says, “Making a hash of this. Sorry.”
Nelson, pathologically polite, says, “Don’t worry about a thing.”
In the distance the railroad crossing bells start up. The girl says, “And I’m such a gom with computers, I couldn’t find your bleedin’ servers if me life depended on it.”
Which is almost funny considering they’re right over there in the ceiling rack.