Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist

by Sunil Yapa

  Five minutes. This was all the time necessary to drop from the zenith of victory into the slough of despond. Five minutes, and now here he was, alone and staring in despair at bloody fish wrapped in butcher paper and blue plastic.

  So focused was he on his own depression he didn’t much notice the two cops or their armored vehicle. The officers were blocking the narrow aisle and Charles not really even paying attention. A bulky square-shouldered man with an unfortunate face. The man asked him who he was. The woman began to pat him down. Charles reached into his pocket for his passport and credentials, and that was the precise moment when the officers lifted him by the arms and threw him into the table of tomatoes.

  He landed on his back. Tomatoes exploding all around him. Staining his jacket with juice and seeds. The tomato man crying in anguish and Charles in a state of complete shock thinking this was the very last. The very last humiliation this country would make him suffer.

  They rolled him onto his face. He felt his arms pulled behind his back, and then a plastic zip cuff was looped around his wrists and cinched tight as any rope. Where his briefcase went, he didn’t dare ask. When his meeting would take place he now knew would be never.

  26

  Strange lights appearing out of the poison cloud. Victor counted; he breathed; he forgot to count, he started over again. His body didn’t belong to him. It belonged to the gas and the gas wasn’t a gas. It was a drug. Divested of its context, seen without its surroundings, the massive tear gas cloud appeared almost innocent. Something neutral and harmless which didn’t care one way or the other about your purpose like a low cloud humming along the ground on a misty day, wetting the grass, your socks, your pants with damp drops of dew.

  But then it touched your face and your skin began to sizzle.

  Do they add something to the gas, Victor wanted to know, to make you paranoid, a chemical to induce panic when inhaled, wherever it is manufactured, the underground labs of Virginia military, maybe that is where it was conceived, but no, this was concocted where? A little lab with glass and bright light, titer and teacher and trickle, a little lab and the green lawns and what did they do on college campuses in the heady 1960s? They protested and burned and organized and wept while inside the brown brick buildings on a glorious sunny day a nice professor with a beard and a salary sufficient to pay for a duplex for his loving wife and pretty kids perfected CS gas, originally discovered in the 1920s, sure, but perfected to drop on the North Vietnamese. But is that what he thought about? No, it was an academic exercise divested of meaning or consequence because what he makes is what he makes and he focuses on the task and not where it will land in the world. He pays little or no thought to what his work will do once loosed into the great brown-yellow elsewhere. Why care about something he can’t control? Why care about something he maybe suspects will only bring troubling thoughts, bad sleep, an irreconcilable dilemma. My family for a North Vietnamese family? Does this make any sense? Is this a real dilemma? Of course I answer no. Of course I know somewhere in the back of my brain that what I use my intelligence and talent and training to perfect then travels a long path through the world that ends in choking searing pain for human beings halfway across the planet, daughters and mothers and sons and dads. I perfected this. But it is my work to perfect it, not to produce it.

  How can we blame him, Victor wanted to know—the nice professor with a beard? He wasn’t the one who dropped it on the North Vietnamese. How can we really blame the pilot that piloted the plane, or the navigator, or the bombardier. They didn’t make the war. Blame the politicians who sent us in? Why bother? They are the most alienated of all, their work to make decisions for millions of people who are known to them only as polling statistics, a crowd of faces come election time, a map of Vietnam come killing time, a cluster of red dots which represents something which must be destroyed. They have the most difficult job of all—to somehow connect that splash of red to the human life it somehow denotes. An awfully tall order to imbue the mindless statistic with the humanity it represents, the village, the rice, the longing for life, the familiar worried glance to the sky to see if rain is coming and it is not rain or cloud that you find there but American B-52s in formation. The terror and the strangeness of this alien bug blotting your sky and causing your children to cry in fear, your chickens to run in fear, but where will they go, back and forth in their pen, and the pigs to scream in fear, and the humans to run in fear, but where will they go, nowhere to go, of course, to escape the destruction that is coming, unless they mean to escape the confines of being Vietnamese. The bombs falling are their ticket to refugee status, the sucking engine whine the signal of their exile from the world where grass is grass and a bird in a tree something to love without thought because it means home.

  No more birds, no more grass, alien life in exile, how could we ever ask anyone to fully inhabit the human life of someone so distant? We cannot ask this man to see where his product will go, how far it will travel, all the way to the shores of Vietnam, to the forests and paddies and roads. Hanoi—what the hell is that supposed to mean? We cannot ask him to know or to control the passage of time, how that war will end, and his gas still moving through the world, not yet done with its journey. We cannot ask this man to see the destination of his work, the consequence of what he uses his love and time and life to make. Cannot ask him to see the tear gas falling in the streets of Seattle, billowing around the bodies of peaceful protesters, cannot ask him there in 1964, perfecting CS gas in his lab, to hear the coughing it produces in Victor’s body in 1999, to hear the wheezing or the awful scratching, to feel Victor’s eyes burning in his head, cannot ask him as he fiddles, measuring and testing, ask him to hear above his humming the future screams or the stomping feet, cannot ask him to imagine the human courage required to sit in this cloud of poison gas and not move, to allow it to swirl and gather at your feet, to slide inside your clothes, to kiss your skin with its cracked fever lips, to lick at your face with its burning tongue. No, we cannot ask him to do that. He is alienated from his work. He is perfecting tear gas. He rides his bike to work. He gets terrible headaches. His youngest daughter does not speak. Rent is due.

  The granulated mist drifting down like a poisoned spring rain.

  Five feet in front of Victor the cops were going after Edie. Edie who had sat down in place of the Doctor. The Doctor whom they’d dragged away by the hair. She was chanting, her arms linked at the elbow to the people on either side of her. Victor watching a fat cop hit her in the face with the pepper spray. The way her chest was heaving as she struggled to breathe made him feel sick and angry, and angry wasn’t really the word, and afraid all over again. He looked at John Henry, but John Henry was lost in the chant.

  WE ARE WINNING

  WE ARE WINNING

  WE ARE WINNING

  The cops stepped back to consult in a group. They gestured and talked and glanced at Edie writhing in pain. They decided something and one man went to his truck and returned with a medical kit.

  Edie wasn’t screaming. Her body rocked back and forth in silence where she sat.

  The cops rummaged inside the medical kit and then approached again. This time they had Q-tips and gauze. They dipped the Q-tips in pepper spray. They rubbed delicately around her streaming eyes. One cop tried to pry open her eyelids, but her head was whipping violently from side to side and he couldn’t get a hold. He stepped over the arms and stood behind her. He put her gray head between his legs and squeezed with his knees. With one hand on her forehead, and the other lifting her chin, he held her still.

  They wore white latex gloves to protect their hands from the pepper spray and Victor watched as the man who had brought the medical kit from his truck worked the Q-tips under Edie’s eyelid. Her body trembled between the man’s knees. The man inserted the Q-tip into the other eye and ran it around as if trying to clear some obstruction and Victor wasn’t angry anymore. There was no room left for anger.

  The cops stood back again to see what w
ould happen. They looked like some weird version of bedside nurses. Stepped back as if maybe a little curious to see what would happen when you applied pepper spray with a Q-tip under the eyelids of a seated woman whose head was held tight between a man’s armored knees.

  One cop snapped his white glove and said something which made another cop chuckle and nod.

  What happened was Edie began vomiting. Still she wouldn’t scream. Just handfuls of white vomit spilling from her mouth.

  The cops pulled at her arms, but still she wouldn’t let go. They seemed a little confused. They tipped the bottle over, soaked the gauze with the pepper spray, then wiped the gauze around her foam-covered mouth.

  They ran the Q-tips up her nose.

  Their latex gloves ministering to her body with heat and pain. They rubbed and poked and prodded. Then they stepped back, curious to see what would happen.

  Victor fighting the tears and begging her to let go.

  Please, Edie.

  One cop absently twisted the gauze above her head, squeezing the excess pepper spray into her open mouth.

  Victor didn’t understand it. What force inside her allowed her to endure that kind of pain? What inner reserve of strength? What was possibly going on inside this woman that gave her the strength to sit silently and not scream?

  She was throwing up from the pain. What inner force?

  Love?

  Faith?

  Conviction?

  Vomiting and convulsing and gasping for breath and still not releasing and still not screaming and Victor watching her and choking back the sobs that wanted to leap from his throat. He wouldn’t cry. He would witness. He would be brave.

  Please, Edie. Jesus, please, just let go.

  Was it love, and then what kind of love was that—love for the action, love for lockdown, some sort of love for the earth and her six billion human fellows? Was her belief in justice enough? Compassion has its limits. It only went so deep, right? Victor thought this pain went all the way down. Whatever it was, Victor found he wasn’t angry anymore. He watched as she rocked back and forth and the cops in their latex gloves stood by curious and talking, absentmindedly pulling on her arms, and he wasn’t scared and he wasn’t angry even as his own chest hitched and heaved.

  Finally, it was enough. Edie released her arms and her seated body pitched sideways to the ground. The cops were pulling her wrists behind her back and cuffing her even as she continued to throw up on her peasant blouse and Victor no longer felt the need to fight the tears. He let them come.

  He tried a little whisper and his face went hot, a little breath of a chant to beat back the morning air.

  The people

  John Henry’s eyes crumpling at the edges where the skin gathered in folds. John Henry cracking a smile behind his paint-splattered bandanna. He looked over and dropped Victor a wink.

  The second time Victor’s voice was just above a whisper. A sort of croaking carried away by the breeze.

  The people united

  John Henry’s broken mud-clod voice, chanting. His red beard and crooked teeth. His chunky black glasses. Can another man’s belief sustain you in your fear? Is a friend—nothing more than a friend, a real and true friend—enough?

  The third time his voice cracked.

  The people united will never—

  He felt it in his chest, a growling vibration rising through his ribs, his larynx, his full voice, the rumbling of his vocal cords, the sound climbing through his throat.

  The wind died and the smoke descended and Edie’s body was mercifully swallowed back into the gray. A kid went skateboarding through the smoke in a torn shirt and suspenders. The cans followed him with a whisper down the street. Victor’s goggles fogging with tears, and no, afraid was not the word for what he now felt, his voice exploding into the air as if by suicide bomb. John Henry’s fingers reaching for his in the awkward pipe. John Henry barking, his own voice raised in strength to match Victor’s, and Victor roaring now, his voice like thunder growing in his belly and spilling from his mouth, their voices sharing the same words, raised into the air proclaiming their belief, their togetherness.

  THE PEOPLE UNITED

  WILL NEVER BE

  DIVIDED

  THE PEOPLE UNITED

  WILL NEVER BE

  DIVIDED

  THE PEOPLE UNITED

  WILL NEVER BE

  DIVIDED

  27

  For five hours now the tear gas had been falling. The streets swarmed with smoke and John Henry coughed and chanted and grimaced behind his bandanna, watching the cops as they stalked and fired.

  For five hours now they had been going at it. They hit people in the face. They smashed hands and wrists, left purple-yellow bruises on shoulders and ribs and backs like odd constellations of pain to be examined by worried friends in the days to come. This was how badly the cops wanted to clear the streets and take their city back.

  They tore away bandannas and gas masks, sprayed pepper spray into people’s naked mouths. Unarmed peaceful protesters chanting in the street—the police dragged them away by their hair. Five hours of physical misery in all its varied forms, a torturing so intense the hours seemed like days. They were hungry and soaking and cold down to their bones. The gas was sticking to their clothes and skin. Everything burned.

  For five hours now they had been assaulted by tear gas, been hit by pepper spray and clubs, and still they remained.

  And still they would not leave.

  They would not stop until they had accomplished what their hearts had demanded they do and John Henry knew they were going to win no matter what it took.

  They had stayed and controlled the intersection. Despite the police’s best efforts, no more than a handful of delegates had made it to the convention center. The opening ceremonies had been canceled. The news passed from mouth to mouth, but he didn’t need the human chain to know. No, John Henry could tell from the tilt of the cop’s heads as they paraded back and forth, the way they huddled in small groups hurriedly talking, the way they strode through the crowd, the anger with which they struck. Every gesture and motion signaled their desperation and frustration. They had never encountered it before, either in the streets or in their dreams of the street: people that would not submit. People unafraid of their violence. Brave people who would not leave.

  John Henry was speechless with glad-hearted joy. They had stayed. They had stayed and they were winning. He felt his heart swell with pride as he said, “Victor, how you doing, son?”

  No reply from Victor. Pure human pride in the flock and nobody more deserving than Victor. Nobody for whom John Henry felt more pride and admiration than Victor. Look at him there. His hair which had been in two tight braids was now frayed and loose. His back rigid. It was as though he was absorbing the horrors of the day through the medium of his seated body. Flaked white spit had gathered at the edges of Victor’s mouth. And his eyes, man. John Henry saw something building in the kid’s eyes and he could not have been prouder of this young man right here than if he were the boy’s own father. He hadn’t been trained a lick, had entered through no gate save his courage. Knew not the power of sitting. Knew not how the rage which became a sorrow can become a kind of joy.

  John Henry said, “How you doing, son?”

  Victor didn’t respond.

  “Victor?”

  And John Henry couldn’t have been prouder of him than if he was his own son, but had the boy’s fear turned to anger? Was he strong enough to allow the anger to become a sorrow which had the power to transform? Could he open himself to it—the suffering which redeemed?

  King materialized out of the fog. To John Henry, she was radiant. The events of the day seemed to have spun her quick through her many selves until they had become fused and polished and whole. Her hair was atop her head and knotted. She shook it loose as she peeled off her gas mask. Her brown dreadlocks, her green eyes bright. Blood streaked her simple shirt, splattered against the white. She was alive and frantic and t
ired and talking, her hands everywhere on him, checking was he good, was he hurt, and the tiredness was in her eyes and the life was in her face and the frantic was in her voice and John Henry thought he had never seen a woman more beautiful than at this very moment. She knelt before him and touched his face.

  “King,” he said, “where have you been?”

  She touched his shoulders. His chest. His sides. Back to his face. Squeezed both his shoulders, ran her hand along his face, adjusted his glasses on his nose.

  “John Henry, please. We need to go.”

  John Henry saying, “We’re not going anywhere. We’re winning.”

  King speaking so quiet John Henry could barely hear her. “Do you really believe that? That we’re winning?”

  “King,” he said, “we are talking here of the human reservoir that has struggled for five hundred years to achieve the impossible. The rights of all people to live in simple dignity, neither oppressed nor anesthetized. What are our personal concerns compared to this? We’re not going anywhere.”

  “Did you see what happened to Edie?” she said.

  He nodded.

  “They’re targeting medics,” she said.

  He nodded again and she gathered her hands between her knees as if she didn’t know quite where to put them.

  “John Henry, I can’t get arrested.”

  She sounded panicky, voice trembling, completely unlike herself. King was one of the most levelheaded women he had ever met—she played fast and loose with plans, sure, subverted their process sometimes, but she was brilliant and brave. She had a quick temper, sure, and he had been burned more than once in the five years he had known her, but in the chaos of a street battle she was stone-cold ice. This was a woman he would trust with his life.