by Julia Stoops
“Precision approach systems for bad weather,” I murmur, and he lifts a hand to show he’s heard.
Three phone lines blinking now.
Fetzer says, “By the way, I meant to say aircraft approach systems for NOU, not landing equipment.” He pushes the button for line one and says, “You’re our first caller, welcome to the show.”
“Hi, guys, this is Maybell.” Sounds like a fifty-something mom. I bet she’s afraid for her kids. “I listen to you every month,” she says, “and I always learn so much. But this time I just had to call. I—this is—I don’t know what to think about this. I had no idea. One of my sons is at WCT doing computer science and the other’s at Cascade, in engineering.”
Bingo.
“We’ve always been a peace-supporting—a family that supports peace,” she says. “We raised our kids to value life, and peace, and, well, I just hate to think my boys could be working on weapons. That could get used in a war, you know?”
Fetzer says, “I understand your concern, Maybell. Are your sons grad students?”
“My older one is. My younger one will be next year.”
“Find out what they’re working on,” says Fetzer. “Find out if they even know the big picture of what they’re working on. Drop us an email. We’d like to know.”
“Oh, I will,” says Maybell. “I’m looking at the details on your website right now, I’ll show them this.”
“Thanks, Maybell. And keep talking peace.”
“Hello, caller,” says Nelson, “you’re on the air.”
“Hi. Thanks for taking my call. This is Dan, and I’m calling from Austin, Texas.” He sounds retired. Bet he’s going to bring up something from before I was born.
“I remember way back in ’61 Eisenhower warned about the influence of the military-industrial complex in civilian life—
Bingo again!
“—I remember that speech, it was his farewell address. That was more than forty years ago. What’s wrong with this country? Why don’t we learn?”
“Dan from Austin,” says Nelson, “good point. This has been happening for decades. But the scale of funding and intensity of influence has escalated in the past two years . . .”
Fetzer starts tidying up. Gathers the muffin pieces and the extra bean burrito they gave us. Okay. So the trash can is not the burrito’s destination. Dude, quit eating that, it’s been out of a fridge for hours. Besides, you’ve put on, like, a spare tire in a matter of months.
Nelson’s gesturing like he’s in front of a crowd. “. . . and with the relentless rhetoric about protecting America from terrorists, we tend to forget that the overwhelming majority of people who die in war are ordinary citizens, and their deaths go largely unreported in the US . . .”
Well, look at that. The envelope stuffing has come to a halt and now Deirdre’s the one staring.
Only twelve minutes to go. Fetzer’s got his head in his hands, and this is the fourth call Nelson’s taken in a row. Where does Mr. Mild get his energy? Ooh, and it’s a ticked-off caller, too.
Nelson says, “For example, what makes the Earth Freedom Brigade’s property destruction different from that of, say, the Boston Tea Party, where enraged Americans dumped forty-five tons of tea into the harbor?”
“Well, it was different back then,” says the guy.
“So you said, but I’m asking what makes it different.”
Heh. Go, Nelson.
“Well, they weren’t risking lives of innocent people, for starters.”
Nelson folds his arms on the table top. “So you think eco-activists endanger people? Can you give an example of someone who’s been injured by the actions of an eco-activist? Any example at all?”
The line is silent. Everyone in Studio 2 is watching. The guy with dreads is nodding at Nelson. Then the caller says, “There was that police officer. He was acting as a security guard. Got killed when they bombed the building.”
Huh? News to me.
“When was this?” says Nelson.
“About four years ago. In Alabama, yeah.”
“You’re mixing it up with an abortion clinic bombing. Birmingham, 1998, and yes, the officer died. But can you give me an example of a person injured by environmental activists?”
This is why Nelson is on air and not me. He’s going to have his own show one day. I can just see it.
“Must happen a lot,” says the guy. “They’ve been blowing things up for years.”
“My point is that there are no examples. The Earth Freedom Brigade are scrupulous about preserving life, both human and animal. They sabotage property and systems they consider dangerous to life on earth, and in the process they go out of their way to avoid causing bodily harm. So if you wanted to make a comparison, the American revolutionaries’ tarring and feathering of tax collectors in the 1770s looks downright brutal.”
Dude’s like a terrier, won’t let go.
“Well, okay,” says the caller, “but these eco-terrorists, they’re just a bunch of spoiled kids. They need to grow up and face facts.”
“That’s pretty much what the British thought of Americans back in the 1770s,” says Nelson. “Rioters. Savages. Spoiled children. Good thing those spoiled children kept their vision intact, otherwise we’d still be bowing to the queen of England.”
Through the window to Studio 2 comes silent clapping from Isobel and the others. The lines are full. We’re not going to get through them all in ten minutes.
This has turned out to be a damn good show.
Deirdre runs up to us in the hall. “That was bleedin’ fantastic!” She grabs Nelson’s arm. “The woman from Niger was heartbreaking. And that bit about the Alaskan rainforest—you’ve got me caring about every bloody tree in that forest.”
Pain ricochets up from my knee and my water bottle rolls under the stupid church pew. I kick the pew. “Why the fuck does this thing have to be here?”
We have been awake for thirty hours.
Nelson sits on the pew with a thud. Fetzer leans against the wall and pinches the bridge of his nose. The cell phone rings in his pocket. He frowns at it, flips it open.
“Omnia Mundi Media Group,” he says, then starts going, “Yeah, uh-huh . . .”
“And I loved the bit from Shakespeare,” Deirdre says.
I wish she’d shut up; I want to know who’s calling.
“Oh,” says Fetzer into the phone. He ducks his head and smiles. “Thanks.”
Nelson gazes up at Deirdre with those big eyes all full of lust. He lifts one hand and says, “‘O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, that I am meek and gentle with these butchers.’”
Deirdre presses her hands together like praying. “It’s perfect. What’s it from?” Except she says “parr-fact.”
“Can we make it tomorrow?” says Fetzer. “Yeah, we’re, uh, booked up the rest of today.”
Who the hell is he talking to?
Nelson looks sheepish. “Well, actually, Julius Caesar. Mark Anthony says it over Caesar’s corpse, so it doesn’t really have anything to do with the earth.”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” says Deirdre. “It works.”
Fetzer shuts the phone with a click. “That was Kate Simms. Oregon Herald. She wants to run the Pentagon cash to local colleges story.”
I say, “Cool.”
“Yup. Providing it gets past her senior editor. She’s hoping for a front page above the fold.”
“She’s not bad for mainstream,” I say. “I’d trust her with it.”
“Kate Simms?” says Fetzer. “She’s the best one there. She is a true, truth-seeking journalist. Old school.”
“It’s always nice to be noticed,” says Nelson.
Jeez. The look Deirdre sends him is giving me diabetes.
15: FETZER
I think Deirdre fell in love with all of us, in a way. I remember the evening she stood in the kitchen and looked around at us with a moved little smile. Thing is, she had a beer in her hand, one of Jen’s she was helping herse
lf to, in exchange for pretending to be interested in Jen’s lectures on organic microbrewing. I saw what I wanted to see. Her happy. Jen adjusting, even trusting. Best of all was Nelson stepping out. Slow, like he was in a space suit and he wasn’t sure there was enough air, but for sure.
And, I must admit, it was damn nice to have a decent cook in the house. I told her so, and she laughed and tossed her hair back as she reached into the fridge. Then she handed Nelson a bag of purple beets, and said, “Would you mind peeling these?”
Nelson took off his jacket, rolled up his shirt sleeves, serious and honored. Me and Jen got to watch the Dee and Nelson show as they made dinner.
She got the jar of brown rice (which she had earlier moved, along with the lentils, flour, and beans to the bottom of the roll-cart, out of the sun) and measured some into a pot.
“You have any relatives in Portland?” To Nelson, not to us.
Nelson was flaying strips off a giant beet into the sink. “No,” he said. Peel, peel. An evening’s worth of story there, with his dad who hasn’t spoken to him since he left the Forest Service, and his neocon brother. “My father lives in Florida,” he said, “and Mom passed away when I was in college.”
“That’s terrible,” said Deirdre, and she crossed herself over the pot of rice.
“Hah!” I said. “Haven’t seen anyone do that in decades.”
Nelson looked up from his beet. “Do what?”
“She crossed herself.”
“It’s the least you can do,” said Deirdre, and she stirred the rice to wash it. “When someone speaks of the dead.”
Nelson stood back to let her drain the water. Science guy wary in the face of her superstition, his hands were magenta, and he held the beet like some wild and holy orb. For a second I thought of a heart pulled from a living chest, which was such an un-Nelson-like image I almost laughed. They’d raised him Lutheran, pale and plain, and even that he turned his back on.
He should have just handed her his heart and said, Here, chew it up now, get it over with, save me some time.
She ran more water. “Any brothers or sisters?”
“A younger brother. In Malaysia. He’s vice president of a mineral resources company.”
“Do you see much of him?”
“Not much.”
His hands looked dipped in dye. She set the pot aside and started washing lettuce, crowding him at the sink.
“That’s no good,” she said. “I know what it’s like, though. Didn’t know me da, and me ma died a few years ago.” She crossed herself again, a gesture so quick you could miss it.
“Sorry to hear that,” said Nelson. Right then the phone rang, and he turned, and his white shirt was dotted with pink beet juice. He’d forgotten the apron.
“Avoid contact with skin,” said Jen, and she reached for the phone. “Omnia Mundi Media Group.” She grabbed a pad, scrawled on it, and held it up for us. “EFB.”
Finally: the Earth Freedom Brigade was getting back in touch.
“’Kay,” said Jen. “It’ll go up tonight.”
She hung up. “That was Brian. They’re ready for the video to go live.”
“’Bout time,” I said.
“You doing a film?” said Deirdre.
Nelson gestured with the peeler. “It’s some work we did a few weeks ago. Right before you came, actually. We filmed an action, and it’s going on our website.”
“An action?” said Deirdre, then her eyes bugged out. “You’ve got beet juice on your shirt!”
“Yeah. And my tie.”
“And you know nothing about this,” said Jen.
Deirdre turned. “What? Why not?”
“For your safety,” said Nelson. “Better if you don’t know anything.”
She frowned in confusion.
We’d discussed it earlier, what we’d tell her when the inevitable questions came up.
I said, “This is how it works, Deirdre. People do things for a better world. We document them, usually on video. Some of the things they do are technically illegal. We don’t draw the line at technicalities. But when we put the documentation on our website, we say it was sent to us anonymously.”
It took a second for her to connect the dots, then her hand went to her mouth. “Jaysus Christ, you mean like that arson you talked about on your show? You were there?”
Nelson looked down at the damn beet. “We were there.”
Deirdre pressed her hands against her apron. “Holy Mary. You light fires?” She glanced at the door. The nailed-shut door.
“It’s not what you’re thinking,” I said. “We’re not arsonists. Think of us as part of the fifth estate.”
“The what?”
Nelson said, “Non-mainstream media. Unconstrained by gatekeeper institutions.”
She shook her head like she was driving off a gnat. “But that kind of violence,” she said. Her eyes skittered to the knife on the chopping board. “Why even support it?”
“The point is the wild horses were set free,” said Jen. “Weren’t you listening?”
“But why were you there?”
Nelson said, “We’re independent journalists. We’re building archives. The whole environmental movement.”
Deirdre’s voice got squeaky. “But why burn it down?”
Jen pulled herself up straight in her chair and unfurled her thick arms. “To repeat. The BLM’s management of these herds is a fucking joke.” She gave Deirdre the stare. “They’re supposed to protect the horses, but they get a shitload of money from letting cattle and sheep graze public land, so they say it’s being overgrazed by the horses and round them up. Which is bullshit. The horses are outnumbered fifty to one by livestock. So what do they do with these amazing wild animals? Adopt them out.” Jen’s smile was smarmy. “Isn’t that just adorable? People adopting and taking care of wild horses? Well the adoptions are a sham. Ninety percent end up as pet food. The BLM eliminates a third of the horses they’re supposed to be protecting.”
“Oh,” said Deirdre.
Jen sat back and laced her fingers across her stomach. “Sucks, doesn’t it?”
“But isn’t ‘action’ a bit of a euphemism for burning down someone else’s bleedin’ building?”
Jen’s mouth tweaked in a half-smile. “Three buildings.”
“We had nothing to do with the planning or execution of it,” said Nelson. “And action is just standard terminology. Covers, you know, tree-sits, protests, barricades.”
“Action figures sold separately,” said Jen.
Deirdre put a hand to her forehead. “There are other methods for getting your point across.”
Jen looked at Deirdre through slits. Her hair was wild around her head. “You have no idea what we’re up against, do you?”
And I said, “Let she who has not sinned cast the first stone.”
The look Deirdre gave me. Reproach, and fear.
Nelson, in his best gentle-but-firm voice, said, “The purpose of eco-sabotage is to take the profit out of exploitation. The Earth Freedom Brigade takes a lot of risks, makes a lot of sacrifices, because they’re committed to a cause they think is right.”
Deirdre snorted. “I’ve heard that kind of nonsense before.” Then, “Aren’t you afraid you’ll be implicated?”
“Nope,” I said. “Got the video in the mail, remember?”
“But it’ll get traced to you. You were there at the same time.”
“Change the tags on the car,” said Jen. “Pay cash for gas and motel. None of us has a regular job. Frank answers the phone and says we’re out. Only person who might blab is you.”
“And if we were worried about that,” I said, “youda been out on your ass weeks ago.”
Deirdre rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry. I won’t say a thing. It’s just a bit of a surprise, that’s all.” She put her hand on her forehead again. “Mind if I have another beer?”
The kitchen fell quiet. The light was yellow and warm. Jen went to the fridge and handed Deirdre a bottle.
“Try the Creekbed Porter. It comes out of a nearly zero-waste operation.”
A few days later we were camping in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest at the radio station’s annual retreat. Franky house-sat, and I was glad he had Deirdre’s company. Jen had joked about them getting it on, but Franky responded that while he thought Dee was “super awesome,” he wasn’t “into her like that, you know?” Because even though she was “like, really nice,” she was also, “like, ten years older.”
Good, I thought. My plan is working.
It was early July and still cool in the forest. Jen and I were hiding in the tent, despite which I was slapping at my neck. “Fucking mosquitoes driving me fucking crazy.”
Jen, protected by all that hair, ignored me. She laid a piece of Plexiglas on the tent floor and set the laptop down, sat cross-legged, and wound her hair into a knot. Sometimes I’d wonder what it must be like to have all that wavy stuff growing out of your head. I’d rub my scalp, prickly with a day or two’s growth, and envy her mosquito cover. But it got tangled in branches, trapped in car doors. That hair also got the attention of the girls, the guys, and the ones in between. But Jen preferred people at a distance, regardless of gender. Sometimes I wanted to push her out the door in the mornings and tell her to go play with other kids.
Jen flipped the laptop over and took to the battery slot with a coin.
I said, “Hey, that Zoe’s something else, huh?”
Jen eased out the battery, put it in a plastic bag. “She’s all right.”
I said, “Great legs, great ass, and proud of it.”
“That’s sexist. Quit sounding your age, old man.”
“Gotta love the scantily-clad hippie chicks,” I said.
Jen pulled a new battery out of another plastic bag. “Hey, I found a place where the Ear works. Got a line of sight from the top of the ridge.”
“Good. You check the news? On second thought, maybe I don’t want to know.”
“Just the usual depressing shit.” Jen clicked the new battery into the laptop.
“Yup,” I said. “But that Zoe? She was all over you at that program committee meeting.”
Jen pressed her freckled fingers down on the battery even though it was already in. “She was all over Nelson, Fetz, and you know it.”