Rebels (John Bates)

by Scott Powell

  Life for most young people in the State of America is very difficult. Getting enough to eat is a struggle, let alone having things like pencils, shampoo, conditioner, soap, paper to do your homework on. But life for a member of the Young Army is abundantly different. We have nice uniforms to wear to school, soda and pizza parties, and candy is plentiful. Girls will go out with boys from the Young Army and sometimes do other things—which of course is prohibited but is done anyway—for the candy. The boys joke and call them candy girls. I do no such thing.

  The candy I get, I save and give to my mother, who after church on Sundays gives it away to the small wide-eyed children who gather outside the church building. These children are so hungry and famished it breaks my mother’s heart to have so little to give them. Last Sunday, my mother gave three peppermints to this one little girl who already was at least half starved. The little girl gave my mother a weak smile and asked, “Are you an angel?”

  I could see my mother holding back tears as she kissed the little girl on the forehead and answered, “No, princess, but I wish I were an angel, then I could give you all the things you need.”

  I don’t have a problem with Sandra, and the pencil is really no loss. I walk to my first-hour class—algebra, which I enjoy a lot—with one less pencil in my backpack. I sit down in my desk; it is old with rust covered legs and has hundreds of names etched into its wooden top. I pull out my textbook. It is tattered and worn, held together by a rubber band with pages missing here and there. I have to make sure I get to class early to discuss with the teacher, Mr. DeFuniak, what pages we will be using in order to see if I have the appropriate pages to do the practice equations. If I don’t, he will make a copy of it for me. But he can’t do that for everyone, so some people get a zero because they don’t have the right pages.

  Mr. DeFuniak’s clothing is shabby and unkempt. He has little to work with and is constantly running out of chalk. This makes teaching algebra very difficult, but I still enjoy it. After thousands of years, A2+B2 still equals C2. After class, it is on to history and the falsified glories of the State. I know the real history; my father and mother make sure I know it. Those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it, my father would often state. If you don’t know your history then you don’t know who you are. How can you know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been? Then I go to science, which is kind of a joke with only one microscope, a few Bunsen burners, and a Petri dish or two.

  Finally, it is lunch. I am starving; not having breakfast is really getting to me. Food in the cafeteria is little more than gruel and only the most desperate eat the food there; others bring whatever they can afford from home. I know I am in for a treat; my mother had been able to get hold of a ham last week and had carefully, lovingly cured it. We feasted on that ham Sunday, and we were still enjoying the blessings of the ham on Monday as Mother added the ham bone into some dry beans, slowly cooking them over a hot stove, creating the most delicious pork and beans we had eaten last night with some homemade bread.

  Normally, we eat beans with no flavoring except their own and these beans are not some soft beans from a can or fresh from a garden. No, these beans are hard, old, dried beans that have a pungent taste when eaten alone and take hours to soften and do so only after they’ve been soaked in water for a whole day. Forget to soak your beans and your family would go hungry for a very long time.

  I realize we are very lucky to have a licensed garden with fresh fruits and vegetables my mother cans and carefully preserves. Most homes are not allowed to grow a garden based on the State’s laws, which I do not understand. Especially if all families could do this, it would prevent a lot of suffering. But the State has no interest in people, only in what they can give or do for the State. Things have improved since I joined the Young Army. An example of this was the added privilege of the ham; sugar is sometimes given to us, lemons on occasion, and an orange is a rare gift.

  I sit down at what most consider is the popular table, but I am here because it is expected of me as a member of the Young Army to sit with the others of my squad. And they sit at the popular table. Popular I may be, but not in your traditional way. Not in the way of putting others down to make myself look good, not in the way of dating the right girls and going to the right parties. I am popular because I try to do the right thing. I try to help people where I can, and most people either respect me or like me for it. Some, of course, do not, but those I ignore. Others like me because I am the top recruit in the Young Army, better than anyone has seen in years. I am glad of this, especially of the special privileges this has given my family. But I wonder at what cost.

  Chapter 4

  I pull my brown paper bag from my backpack and reach in and pull out a fantastic ham sandwich. I am about to dive into my feast when my friend, Mark Jenkins, sits down at the table with a tray full of school lunch. The whole table stops eating their own sandwiches to look at him. The rancid smell travels across the table, making me want to gag. The girl next to him does, in fact, gag at the putrid food before our friend.

  “My mother forgot to pack my lunch.” Mark stammers without looking up, but of course I know better, after what Stephanie told me this morning. I know the real reason he is placing his spoon into the filth that passes for a school lunch is because of the loss of his father’s job at the government-owned factory—for simply expressing his anger at the temperature of our houses to a foreman, who in turn reported him to government officials, who then had him fired. His Dad’s small complaint about the State and their procedures had cost him his job. Now while he applied for a new job, it would take months to get an appointment to receive the paperwork in order to apply for such. Until then, there would be little to nothing to eat.

  This is not the first time the State has handled families that have expressed their displeasure of their policies. The results have never been favorable. The State makes examples of those who do not comply. This is why my family is especially careful that no one knows we have a Bible and my parents teach me the real history of the United States. Otherwise, if they were found out, it could be punishable by death. This is what happened to many early on with the organization of the State.

  “Go throw that stuff away,” Lane’s new candy girl says next to me. Mark looks as if he is about to cry, I know and he knows this will probably be the only thing he will get to eat today.

  “Here, man, I will share half my sandwich with you,” I say. Mark rises, grateful for the offer, and goes to throw away the contents of his tray. I break off half of my sandwich; others see my example and while he is gone, they fish through their lunch bags to find things to donate for his lunch. When he returns, not only is my sandwich there, but also half a peanut butter sandwich, half a baked potato, a few carrot sticks. Even the candy girl has given him some peppermints. Mark eats my sandwich in silence, but I notice he places the other items in his bag, no doubt for later when he is hungry. Or perhaps he is saving it for his little brothers, who are too young to go to school to receive the free lunch. I see him carefully place the peppermints into his pocket. Mark has a large family, and it seems to me someone is always sick; the peppermints are probably being saved for a younger brother or sister who might be ill.

  After my meager lunch that leaves me physically hungry but spiritually filled, I go to the water fountain to try to satisfy my stomach with water. The water tastes of copper and rust. I wonder how long it will be before Mark is so hungry the school lunch actually looks good. That day will come; I know it. By then, some of his younger brothers and sisters will be dead, and Mark will be banned from our table to sit amongst others who have no other choice. For some reason, the words of my father echo in my head. “You can’t take freedom away from a free person. Freedom is a mindset, freedom starts from here,” he would say, pointing to my heart, “and from there”—pointing to my head. “It is a gift from God. One can never take freedom from a truly free person. They can never make you think or feel things you don’t
want to. You are the master of yourself. Be your own master, John, and turn yourself over to the greatest master, who is God.” My father is famous for such sayings or, at least, he is in our own home. Every Sunday after church, we come home and before lunch, my mother pulls the curtains closed and my father teaches us out of the Bible. I am not sure how they got a copy of it, but they keep it carefully hidden in our home in our small secret compartment in the wall.

  Last hour, I don’t have class, and I am excused so I can participate in the Young Army training. As I walk outside, I am greeted with clear blue skies and the sun glaring down upon me and the worn track and field we train on. I look around for a moment and wonder what this all used to look like when things were well maintained. Though still young, I can only feel this burning desire to want to do more. But what can a fifteen-year-old do against the State and those who faithfully, or fearfully, follow? I wonder why others have not stood and said enough, but stay silent in darkened corners.

  As I start in on the five-mile warm-up run, I remember trying out for the Young Army my freshman year. I remember my father telling me how important it is to learn the skills the Young Army would teach me, but to also remember who I am and the values he and my mother have instilled in me. I remember I was told by the sergeant I had little to no chance of making it in my freshman year, most of the Young Army recruits are juniors and seniors, and positions in the Young Army are very coveted. But without even trying hard, I blew them all away. It was like a dream. Before, our family struggled to survive day to day, but now that I am in the Young Army, I am given special privileges, like extra clothing, food, and other things my fellow students have no access to. I am saddened by how society has become segregated in this way. Was not the United States originally based on freedom and equality? My parents have taught me, knowing such knowledge will never be shared within the walls of this school. For such information has been banned by the State, and anyone found teaching or sharing such views is considered treasonous, and treason is punishable by death!

  My mother is a superior cook and gardener. She can make anything grow and anything taste good; she is a genius. Because of that, I had better nutrition, and this gave me a leg up when it came to endurance. It has been many years since the State has taken over, and very few people even remember how to grow their own gardens and what nutritional value means. That’s obvious based on what the school now defines as lunch. Then there is the edge my father gave me, being a mixed martial artist. His father had been a second-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do and had created his own unique style called Reality Based Street Fighting. He had been relentless in training my father and, in turn, my father had been relentless in training me. At first, I thought this to be child abuse, but as I grew older and my skills became better, I realized this training might save my life one day.

  I still remember when my father came to me and simply stated, “You have six months to prepare for full contact, or you can simply get knocked on your butt.” That was terrifying, especially when I was only thirteen and weighed no more than a little over a hundred pounds. My father didn’t care and always reminded me the rules of street fighting: there are none! So that being said, I tried to be prepared the best I could, but let’s face it, I was on my butt a lot when I had to spar my dad! Thanks to all that training, I literally kicked everyone’s butt and made it into the Young Army with aces. But today, my body feels sluggish, missing the fuel from the other half of my sandwich. Plus, the day seems uncommonly hot as we run around the dark blue track. Normally, I would finish first, but today I come in second behind David Patlow.

  “Wow, I beat John, wow!” Everyone is high-fiving him. I walk off, shaking my head. I sit down to retie my shoelaces, as if this action will make me faster and stronger.

  Sergeant Epps comes and sits down next to me and asks, “What’s up, John?”

  “I didn’t get enough to eat at lunch today,” I reply. It is an excuse, but a true one.

  “Here,” the drill sergeant says, tossing me a power bar. “We can’t have that happen again; I’ll make sure your rations are increased. I’ll have someone bring it to your house tonight.” I nod, knowing there is no use arguing. The power bar gives me the strength and energy I need to continue through Young Army training without difficulty. I do two hundred sit-ups and one hundred push-ups, cross the monkey bars with ease, and take apart and put back together a semiautomatic weapon in half the time than is required.

  Then, of course, we go through our hand-to-hand combat training. Though I aced this part, which allowed me to join the Young Army, I still need to be careful since my father is not licensed with the State to give such instruction. The State continues to try to monitor all our activities to ensure it stays in control. Today, since everyone saw me lose in the track run, I know they are hoping the same will transpire in our self-defense training. At first, as usual, I am able to handle my competition with ease, but the sergeant decides to change things up a bit.

  “Gentlemen, today we are going to initiate a new program the State has decided to implement in the Young Army. They believe with this new program we will better see who has the true potential in helping the State and its people.”

  I can only think, What could they possibly do that they are not already doing to us? But then the sergeant starts to bark out further instruction.

  “Before, when doing our hand to hand combat, it was based on one-on-one. But today you will be engaging multiple opponents, and this exercise will last until either the attackers have been subdued or you have lost the fight. You will be using your training, as well as improvising with what skills you naturally have. In order to prevent any serious injuries, the State has given us special gear to be worn during this exercise, but it will not compromise your ability to engage your enemy,”

  This is going to be real interesting, I think, especially when I see some of the senior members glance in my direction. I simply smile. It takes us about ten minutes to put the gear on. With it on and the hot sun streaming down on us, things are starting to really heat up.

  “Okay, boys, who is going to be the first?”

  All I can hear is the light breeze going by until David Patlow chimed in stating, “I think John should go first, Sarge, since he seems to be the best in this category.” If thoughts could kill, David would be dead by now, but I stay silent, waiting on the sergeant to give his next orders.

  “What do you say, John?” Of course, I don’t want to be looked upon as a wimp, so I enter the circle designed for this activity. “Good. I like it when a soldier speaks with his actions. So who wants to be his attackers?”

  Of course, David Patlow and two other very large senior members join willingly. Did I forget to mention David was the one I had whooped on, allowing me into the Young Army? He was the golden boy before I got there. I guess he hasn’t forgotten the experience.

  “Alright, the rules are simple: there are none! Either the attackers have been subdued or the defender has been defeated! When I say stop, you stop! Are we clear?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Good, now let’s get this party started, shall we?”

  Immediately, David and the other two separate to form a circle around me, and my heart starts pounding. I remember when I used to get my butt kicked by my dad, a man almost twice my size.

  I will never forget the time I went with him to work. I hadn’t been there very long when a very large man started to cause trouble on the work floor. My father had not hesitated confronting this man, simply stating, “That’s enough, you will cease and desist and go back to work!”

  The man, who was known as Bear at the workshop, told my dad to mind his own business before he got hurt. Well, needless to say, my dad didn’t care for that response and told Bear he was relieved of his duties and to leave the premises until further notice. Bear flipped over a couple of desks and made it very clear he was going nowhere. In fact, he was planning on engaging my dad, meaning there was going to be a fight. I watched this massive
man of six-foot-four rush my dad. My dad braced himself with his legs spread out to allow him to keep his balance without allowing this crazed lunatic to pick him up.

  My dad had no chance of winning; the man was huge. Bear grabbed Dad’s shoulders and pushed him backwards. In return, my dad grabbed him back. My father tied up Bear’s arms and let Bear push him back while he controlled what was really transpiring. Dad kneed Bear in his gut and then into his leg, causing Bear to double over in pain. Now distracted by the pain my father had inflicted, Bear did not see Dad’s right elbow coming until it connected squarely across his jaw. He stumbled backward. I could hear Bear gasping for air.

  But Dad was not finished. He rushed in throwing two devastating body shots and a solid right that sent Bear toppling into a pile of boxes, where he lay and finally blurted out, “I’m done, you win!”

  One thing I always admired about my dad was the fact that he was an honorable man. He went over to Bear to help him up and took him to his office to discuss what his problem really was. I never knew what was said, but after that day, Bear always was a perfect employee and a loyal friend to my father. That day, I also learned no matter what obstacle I am confronted with, the only thing stopping me from winning is me.