by Julia Stoops
“Right?” he asked in a voice so quiet I thought it had come from somewhere else.
“It was,” I said.
His face hung there. He whispered, “Do you think she killed herself?”
That took the wind out of me for a moment. “I don’t know. Maybe. Jen thinks so.”
Franky leaned sideways toward me. “Does Nelson?”
“I hope not, and I don’t want to put the idea into his head.”
A rattling sound started at the end of the street.
“It’s so incredibly sad,” insisted Franky. “Didn’t she know we all loved her?”
“She tried real hard to keep herself together, but it’s like rust. You can wire brush it till it gleams; you can sand and you can prime. But the rust is still there, and it starts eating away again. After a while there’s nothing solid to hold the chassis together.”
“That’s so damn ni—nile . . . what’s that word?”
“Nihilistic?”
“Yeah.”
Right then the three homeless guys rolled up with their rattling cart and stopped.
“Got a smoke?” asked the vet in fatigues. Deirdre had told me their names, but I couldn’t remember.
“Sorry, man, not tonight.”
Franky gave me a funny look.
I held up the bag. “Want some chips?”
As they left their cart on the sidewalk and shuffled up the cracked front path, I realized there was no way I was putting my hand back in the bag after they’d helped themselves. To my relief Franky said, “I’ll get a bowl,” and he sprinted inside. When he came out I poured most of the chips into the bowl, and the three guys arranged themselves on the brand-new bottom step and started to eat. That sour odor of neglect wafted up.
“She gone?” asked the black guy with impossible cheekbones. “Deirdre, the donut lady?”
“Yeah,” I said. “She’s gone.” I was going to leave it ambiguous, an implied move to another city, but the guy nodded. “Yeah. Her soul was half floating away, anyway.”
“Aw, shit,” said the vet. He shook his head. “That’s real sad.”
The one with the shakes concentrated on conveying chips into his mouth.
“Yeah,” I said. My heart was thudding at the cheekboned guy’s prescience. “It is. Franky, can you get these gentlemen some juice?”
Franky took his cue.
“How’d she go?” asked the vet.
“Drowned.” I nodded in the direction of the river.
The vet slapped his thigh. “Shit. She was so fucking nice, too.”
The high-cheekboned guy swallowed a mouthful that bounced his bony Adam’s apple. He took another chip. “It’s a clean way to go.”
Volumes of understanding opened up between us. “Yeah. She stayed clean. Relatively.”
“That’s good,” he said.
Franky reappeared and handed out three bottles of sparkling pink grapefruit juice. Something Nelson had gotten a taste for, and when Sylvia found out, she bought him a case.
The vet opened a bottle for the guy with the shakes and he clamped both his dirty hands around it tight.
“I’ll drink to that,” I said.
“Drink to what?” said Franky.
“Deirdre’s kind heart.”
“Yeah,” said Franky.
The crossing bells started up, and our bottles clinked together over the yellow paint of the porch.
79: JEN
“Kate’s here,” I say, and I step over to our new front door. It opens so smoothly in my hand. “Hey, Kate.”
She’s all dressed up in a skirt and heels, ready for the big interview. “Hi Jen,” she snaps, and she hands me Adrian. “Can you hold him?”
Right.
Over in the kitchen, Fetzer holds up the coffee pot. “Just in time.”
What am I supposed to do with this small human being wiggling in my arms?
Kate throws an Oregon Herald on the new coffee table. “They finally wrote a whitewash.” Then she turns and puts a hand on her forehead. “Sorry, Jen, I’m just—”
“It’s okay,” I say, because Adrian’s now teetering on his own two feet, holding on to my hand, and the look of astonished concentration on his face is the best thing ever.
“He’s standing!” I say.
“Yes.” Her voice says he’s been driving her insane all morning. She drops her butt onto one of the new sofas.
New to us, that is. They’re pretty nice, for donated.
Nelson sits next to her, picks up the Herald. She stares up at the ceiling. “Bastards. It’s full of distortions.”
Adrian take a step, wobbles, regains his balance. Wow. Imagine learning to walk.
“You wanna go to the table?” I say. Our brand-new kitchen table, thanks to the awesome fundraiser. But his eyes don’t follow where I’m pointing. They’re caught by a cat on the TV, an ad for cat food with the sound turned down.
Nelson hands the paper back to Kate. “It’s unconscionable.”
Fetzer and I agree, and he brings her a coffee, starts reading the story.
“Wanna say hi to Nelson?” I ask, and Adrian takes a step in Nelson’s direction.
“Thank you so much for minding him,” says Kate. “You guys are lifesavers.”
“No problem,” says Nelson, and he crouches down. Adrian lets go of me and reaches for Nelson’s open hands. Kate’s watching through half-closed eyes, and the soft mom in her comes back and she smiles.
“Wow,” says Nelson. “You are such a big boy. You are such a big boy,” and Adrian giggles like crazy from the tickling.
“Anyhow, dudes,” I say, “It’s like, getting worse everywhere.” I turn the laptop around so they can see the news headline. “A cell got raided in Idaho. Three taken into custody. The Bush administration’s treating the EFB like some homegrown equivalent of Al-Qaeda.”
“Oh. Crap, yeah,” says Fetzer. He pulls a scrap of newspaper out of his back pocket. “And listen to this. ‘A patron logging on to an internet chat room from a college library computer was handcuffed and detained by local police for five hours after Secret Service agents accused the forty-year-old man, a federal polygraph instructor, of making threatening remarks about President Bush.’”
Kate winces. “God help us.”
Adrian’s tugging on Nelson’s tie. It’s the first time he’s worn a tie since the funeral. It’s purple-gray and it goes with that new gray shirt in a way that I would not normally notice or if I did, approve of, but it’s good seeing him getting his shit back together.
On the laptop the IM box pops up. It’s VioletFire.
>Jen, what’s UP? It’s been WEEKS. You okay?
“Oh, and you know what?” I say. “Maryville—the wild horse and burro facility? Brian told me it’s been rebuilt.”
“With horses?” asks Fetzer.
“More likely with wood,” I say, and Kate grunts out a laugh.
“Well, that was a complete waste of time, then,” mutters Fetz. He gets up to pour himself more coffee.
“It’s the prevailing trend,” says Nelson. He plops himself down opposite Kate. Arranges the kid on his knee. “The Taboose ranger station was rebuilt. And so was Vail.”
“Was that the ski resort?” asks Kate.
“Yeah, Colorado,” I say. “They tried to save lynx habitat. Bye-bye, lynx.”
Nelson jiggles Adrian on his knee. “These places always have good insurance.”
Okay, I have to get back to Vi. Been putting it off too long.
*** TheJenerator has joined #rezist
&nb
sp;
The silent TV flickers with another commercial. A grinning peach slices itself into a bowl of cereal. Kate’s watching Nelson over the rim of her coffee mug. Nelson and Fetz are talking about sabotaged shit getting rebuilt. Stuff we’d never normally mention in front of someone like her.
But she’s not Kate, Oregon Herald, anymore. She’s Righteous Kate.
The TV weather comes on. Silent maps. Silent, happy weatherman predicting silent spring weather.
Nelson finds a label sticking out of the back of Adrian’s tiny jacket. Kate watches him tuck it in. The guy’s been through so much. Come so far.
“Nelse,” I say. “It’s hard to believe you’re the same guy as six—no, nearly seven years ago.”
Nelson smooths a hand over the kid’s blond hair. “Yeah?”
“Dude, you were such a noob. But you jumped right in.”
Over in the kitchen Fetzer yelps out a laugh. “Remember that first time you worked on a roadblock?”
Nelson snorts. “Yes.”
Fetzer comes over and says to Kate, “I decide to check up on the new guy, and what do I see? These branches, like, fallen rotten-wood branches, dragged across the road!”
Nelson’s blushing. “I didn’t know, sheesh.” He glances up at Kate and his smile drops.
The look on her face. “You made roadblocks?”
“Several,” he says, nodding. “Many.”
Fetz scratches his ear. “We haven’t done anything like that since ’99.”
Kate’s eyes travel across the three of us.
The look on her face—if I’m not mistaken, there’s a little bit of admiration in there, too.
“Not that I’d ever share that with someone from the mainstream media,” Nelson says, and she grabs the newspaper and swats it toward his head while he ducks and laughs. For the first time since, well, a long time.
“But seriously, guys,” says Nelson, “when I look back at the things we used to do, and the things we report on, it’s been a lot of effort. A lot of risk. But so much of it seems so . . .” He smooths his hand over Adrian’s hair again. “Ineffective.”
My stencil down near the river. The only one left ’cause it gets the least traffic, and it’s already unreadable. And the event itself has fallen into the memory hole.
“Protest in general,” says Fetzer, and he throws up his hands. “Look at how many people turned out before the invasion. Millions around the world. Month after fucking month. Dissed by the mainstream media. And now it’s millions of people feeling totally cynical.”
In chat, Vi and the others are still throwing me questions.
*** TheJenerator has left #rezist
The laptop clicks closed. Out the newly glazed living room window is the new yellow porch. The gravel street. Kate’s car.
Kate touches Nelson’s foot with the toe of her shoe. “I’m glad you’re back at the rallies,” she says.
“Thanks,” says Nelson. “I was nervous getting up on that stage again, but, it turned out okay.”
“You were great.”
“And I got most excellent footage to prove it,” I say.
“But that saying,” says Nelson, “about a tree falling in a forest keeps coming back to me. If dissent rises on city streets, and the media isn’t listening, does it make any sound?”
Kate raises her eyebrows. “Cute.”
“Seriously,” says Fetzer. “Saving puppies would be wall-to-wall news, but the reasons why thousands of people are blocking city streets every week? Nah.”
Nelson picks up the VCR remote. “You saw what they said about it on Channel 8?”
Nelson rewinds and the sound comes up. The Reporter We Loathe has short curly hair and a red rain jacket. Behind him the street is thick with protesters in the rain. The reporter says, “These kids are chanting the same thing over and over again. It seems to be the only thing they know how to say.” Then it cuts to the studio. “Timed to coincide with this was another Support Our Troops gathering in the Park Blocks,” says the anchor, and it cuts to a crowd on a street corner. Even with careful cropping, they couldn’t hide the fact that it’s only about two dozen strong. “We need to trust our president,” says a man.
“Turn it off,” says Kate. She’s closed her eyes. Nelson turns it off. Wraps his arms around the baby.
“Which one is it this morning?” says Fetzer. She opens her eyes like it’s a relief to change the subject.
“OIT Journalism department. Summer classes. With a possibility of more in the fall.”
“You’ll do great,” says Nelson. Then he says to Adrian, “Your mom’s going to be great. Before we know it she’ll be inspiring a new generation to replace these cowards.”
Kate sips her coffee. “Never thought I’d go into teaching. But, I never thought I’d trash my career, either.”
I hold up a headline: IRAQ IS ALL BUT WON; NOW WHAT? “Put a stop to crap like this. We beg of you.”
Kate looks away. Her soft mom voice is gone when she says, “Supposed to be a cornerstone of democracy. Only private business protected by the Constitution. And they go and violate that trust.”
“These are seriously dark days,” I say.
Nelson rests his cheek on Adrian’s blond head and murmurs, “Yeah.”
80: NELSON
Nelson looks out across the crowd filling Pioneer Square. Helicopters throb in the hot August sky, but he isn’t angry. Riot cops bristle on the corners, but he isn’t afraid. The crowd is cheering, and the sound scours through him, rough and clean.
“Four months ago,” he says into the microphone, “President Bush declared ‘Mission Accomplished’ and that ‘major combat operations in Iraq have ended.’”
Boos from the crowd.
“Since then, a hundred and fifty more US soldiers have died in combat. And altogether more than ten thousand Iraqi civilians have met violent ends. Nothing accomplished but suffering and waste.”
More boos.
“But we can accomplish something here at home. We couldn’t stop the war, but we can build peace. Peace here at home.”
A smattering of claps from the crowd.
“Let’s not be distracted by this war. Together we need to prepare for the changes that global warming will bring. Our lives will be altered in ways we can barely yet imagine, and we need to get ready. And not in fear and isolation, but together. We need to convene; we need to learn from each other. We need to examine the threats and the opportunities. We are poised to make decisions that will reverberate for decades to come.”
A thousand faces watch him, but he’s most aware of the people he loves who are close by. Jen, manning the video camera. And at the bottom of the steps, Fetzer and Franky. Kate and Nancy’s daughter, Clarissa. And their new director of development, Sylvia.
When Sylvia had come to their house last month and offered her services pro bono, Jen shook her head. “What you’re saying sounds insane. Brand? Positioning? Who are you, Karl Rove?”
Sylvia spoke slowly. “I’m talking about long-term plans to make Omnia Mundi financially viable. Enable everything you’ve done together to grow and become a powerful voice in the public conversation.”
Franky had slapped his knee and pronounced the idea “Awesome!”
Nelson had said, “Strategic development, Jen. We’re long overdue.”
Fetzer had said, “Jen, we’ve been stripped down to the studs. It’s a
good time to remodel.”
It wasn’t until Sylvia revealed that she’d fired most of her clients to make room for working with them that Jen unfolded her arms. Started to ask reasonable questions. Started brainstorming ways to connect with other communities. And the forums idea was born.
A thousand faces watch Nelson as he announces the forums. How they’ll reach out to underserved and isolated communities. How together they’ll search for ways to move forward despite this administration.
“Despite a war that’s not in our name,” he says. “Despite the anger. Despite the shame.” The crowd cheers.
“There’s a chant being used a lot lately,” he says. “What—does—democracy look like?”
The crowd yells back, “This is what democracy looks like,” and cheers. Nelson holds up his hands until there is quiet. Then he points to himself, to the crowd. “This isn’t what democracy looks like. This is one person, standing in front of a thousand. Democracy isn’t listening to people on stages. Democracy is getting together in dialogue. It’s taking turns at the microphone. It’s all of us asking each other for help. It’s all of us offering what we’re able. It’s all of us taking action. That, my friends, is what democracy looks like.”
A ripple moves through the crowd and the clapping is stronger.
“So who’s coming to the first forum?” he asks. “Raise your hands. I need to know how many chairs to put out.”
Laughter from the crowd, and a sea of hands goes up. Someone yells something unintelligible, but it causes more clapping.
“Great,” says Nelson. “And between now and then, ask yourself what is one good idea that will benefit your community? It can be big or small. Bring an idea to share.”
A guy in the crowd yells again, sounds like “unform error.” Heads turn. A heckler? But people around the guy cheer, so probably not.
Nelson says, “It’s unconscionable what the Bush administration has done. But we can’t turn the clock back. The future is coming, and there’s work to be done.”
“Run—for—mayor!” From someone closer this time.
“Run for mayor!” yells a woman near the front row.