The Brigade

by H. A. Covington

  “Can we talk to the grandmother?” asked Hill.

  “She died last year. Look, Oscar, you know I would be the last to defend a traitor and an informer, and according to that file she was responsible for some bad damage and some Volunteer deaths. That’s unforgivable. But I was this woman’s commanding officer, and I feel obligated to point out that at the same time she was doing good service for the Army and that she died heroically in the line of duty, taking a couple of particularly nasty enemy agents with her.”

  “The same ZOG operatives who were running her as an informant, according to this,” said Hill, riffling through the file.

  “Yeah,” agreed Jackson. “God knows how that came about.”

  “I was there, remember?” Hill reminded him. “We always figured the Mami or the Monkey grabbed her briefcase from her once they pulled her into the car and tried to open it, but maybe Kicky knew the jig was up and she blew that bomb herself as an act of atonement or apology. We’ll never know.”

  “If that’s a possibility, then she deserves the benefit of the doubt,” urged Jackson. “We can’t know what happened that day, but I do know it will damn near kill Jimmy and Lavonne Wingo if this comes out, as well as saddle the daughter with a burden of guilt she doesn’t deserve. There’s one other thing you need to know, Oscar. The Portland cops opened one of those secret snitch accounts for her when she first started informing, paid her electronically every week from a police slush fund, and toward the end she was racking up a pretty impressive buck. I checked with the National Credit Union, who took over all the old American banking assets including the old Bank of America accounts, and the account is still there. It’s not drawing interest because that’s illegal now, but the principal is still there, and the NCU’s records show that the account was never drawn on from the time the account was started. Kicky never touched a penny of that money. Not once. That must mean something.”

  “So, you’re saying . . . ?” prompted Hill.

  “That file was lost for ten years, Wayne. I can’t see any reason why it shouldn’t get lost again. Permanently You can talk about truth being our duty to history and all that, but how can it be right and just to open an old wound that nobody even knew was there, and dig up the dead when it will do nothing but cause pain to the living? Her name is on the wall down on the green a few hundred yards from here. Is it really our duty to go down there and scratch it off? Today of all days?”

  “Bet that’ll be a hell of a speech you make tonight,” said Hill mildly. He closed the file. “Leave this with me, Bill. I’ll look it over to see if there is anything in here that might even remotely impact anything going on today, or which requires that I or my organization take any action. I doubt it, since everyone concerned seems to be dead. If not, then I think I’ve got a Memory Hole stashed around here somewhere. Oh, and I think we can arrange to discover that bank account in some innocuous way and make sure the daughter gets the money. She deserves it, since one way or another, the poisonous and evil régime that paid it killed her mother and her father both, and destroyed her childhood. Go on and tell the folks who are waiting for you what a great day this is, Bill. Don’t worry, you’ll be telling the truth.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Jackson.

  “How’s Christina and the kids?”

  “Fine, as always. Come over for dinner sometime soon. We’ll talk about the old days.”

  “The good old days,” agreed Hill.

  After Jackson left the office, Hill picked up the file in his hand and walked over to the hearth, where the logs had burned down low. He stirred them up with a poker. He carefully read each page, then he crumpled it and tossed it into the fireplace, where each ball of paper caught and flared and burned into ash. The last papers to go before the folder itself were Kicky’s old mug shots from her days as a drug-addicted prostitute under the old order and the old world, now long past. They burst into bright flame and curled and folded into glowing ash.

  “Rest in peace, comrade,” said Hill into the silent room around him.

  * * *

  Down on the wide green swath of the Capitol Mall, a number of veterans from the newly formed NVA Old Fighters Association had gathered for the Independence Day holiday. The Memorial Wall stood before them in massive black basalt, bearing the inscribed names of all the NVA and NDF personnel who had given their lives during the War of Independence. It had only been unveiled a few months before. A large Tricolor flag of blue, white, and green flew over it, on a stone pillar bearing the seal of the Northwest Volunteer Army. Along the base of the monument, chiseled into the finest Italian marble, were the words: “Beloved kinsmen, from the world of darkness into which we were born, from the time of struggle in which we laid down our lives that you and your children may walk in the light, we greet you.”

  Many people were taking sheets of white paper and stubby soft lead pencils from a small kiosk off to one side of the monument. They mounted the steps and walked along the long row of alphabetically listed names, finding and tracing onto the paper in graphite the names of former comrades. Many of them were quietly weeping, men and women alike. In front of the monument dozens of children were running around on the grass, playing and screaming and hollering, mostly oblivious to the solemn adults around them. No one tried to hush them or shoo them off. It was for them that the people on the monument had died, after all.

  A small girl about four years of age marched up to her mother on the grass and tugged on her hand. “What is it now, honey?” asked Annette Sellars.

  The child looked up and announced in a solemn voice, “Jesse Hatfield ate a bug. Janet told him to. Jimmy Wingo jumped off that man,” she added, pointing to a nearby statue. “Janet told him to.”

  “Jimmy Junior, stop climbing on that statue!” yelled Lavonne Wingo at her son. “It’s got nasty stuff from pigeons on it!”

  Eric Sellars picked up his little girl. “We need to get you out of this tattletale phase you’re in, young lady,” he said sternly to her, beeping her nose. “Nobody likes a rat.”

  “Why?” asked the little girl.

  “Because rats have long horrible gray noses and nasty-ass whiskers,” her father explained. “Do you want to walk around with a long horrible gray nose and nasty-ass whiskers?”

  The little girl thought for a bit, then shook her head. “No!” she said decisively.

  “I didn’t think you did.”

  Annette Sellars looked over at her oldest daughter Janet, named after her younger sister who had died. She was an angelic blonde creature, with a ribbon in her hair, standing primly aloof while a number of boys cavorted and wrestled each other to the ground around her, trying to get her attention. Annette shook her head in exasperation. “Honestly, what are we going to do with that child? She’s only eight years old, and already she seems to be making a career out of manipulating boys to do all kinds of dumb things.”

  “Hmm. I wonder where she gets that from?” said Eric with a sidelong look at his wife.

  “I think Jesse would try to catch a moose and ride it if Janet asked him to,” said Julia Hatfield. “She does have such a lovely smile, though.”

  “Can we go see the puppies and go on the swings now, Daddy?” asked the little girl in Eric’s arms.

  “There’s a playground and a small petting zoo at the hotel, and her mind’s been on it all day,” Annette explained to Lavonne Wingo and Julia Hatfield.

  “We brought them here to try and teach them about their heritage, but I’m afraid at their age the Revolution can’t compete with a litter of collie pups,” said Eric with a sigh.

  “They’re kids,” said Zack Hatfield. “They’ll learn in time. Right now they can just enjoy being children, thanks to what we did back then. That’s something we never had. One more victory we’ve ripped away from the kikes.”

  Jimmy Wingo senior was standing off to one side, dressed in a neat suit and tie. A slender and pretty teenaged girl in a blue skirt, white blouse, and sweater stood beside him. Wingo beckon
ed to his wife, and she came over to them. “You know why we brought you here today, Ellie?” her stepfather asked gently.

  “I know,” she said.

  “You all right with it?” asked Wingo.

  “Sure,” said the girl with a smile. “Don’t worry, it’s not some big revelation. You guys never hid anything from me. I always knew I was adopted, and my father died in Iraq, and my mom was killed during the war here.”

  They walked up onto the platform in front of the monument wall, and they strolled down the list of names, every now and then stopping to hold one of the pieces of paper against the wall and etch in a familiar name from the past. Finally they found the name they were looking for. McGee, Vol. Kristin A. it said, and then the date in January when she died. Mary Ellen quietly took the paper and pencil, held it up against the wall and etched her mother’s name onto it, then folded it up and put it in her pocket book.

  “You’ve never asked about her much before, honey,” said Wingo. “Do you remember anything at all? You were very young.”

  “About my mother, no,” said Mary Ellen, shaking her head. “I remember living in a lot of places with Grandma, and I remember coming to realize that there were bad men after us and that was why we always had to hide. But not my mother so much. I was really young the last time we saw each other. Grandma never talked about her much. I know Kristin was . . . well, she had a pretty hard time. That’s probably why she joined the Revolution. Grandma never talked much about those times, the times before, but I know enough from history class at school so I think I can guess some of it. I don’t think Grandma blamed Kristin or hated her. I think it just hurt so much she didn’t want to burden me with it.” She was silent for a bit. “I remember love. Mine and hers. I’ve always remembered loving my mother, and my mother loving me.”

  “Of all the things you could have kept, that’s the best,” said Lavonne.

  “You know Vonnie and I both knew her?” said Wingo.

  “Jim knew her better than me,” said Lavonne, without jealousy or bitterness. “But we both remember her. We came here with some others, the Sellars and the Hatfields, and we’ll be meeting the Randalls and the Jacksons later tonight for dinner. This is a part of your past that you need to know about, honey, before you move on with the rest of your life. Now is the time to ask, because ten years ago today, your mother and the rest of us gave you that life, which we hope will turn out to be happy, wonderful and fulfilling.”

  “If it is, it will be the life you two gave me,” said Mary Ellen seriously. “You know you two are my real father and mother.”

  “We’ve tried to be,” said Jimmy. “Out of love for you, and out obligation to your mother. Honey, you need to know Kicky so you can come to know yourself better. I think you already know that your mother was a brave and noble woman who lived in a bad time in history, but she never gave up on you, or on life. Most people back then just surrendered to the badness of it all. She never did. I’m sure you know that, because you can feel that part of her in you. But I think it’s time you knew some of the details, and we can fill those in.”

  As the three of them walked down the steps of the memorial to their waiting friends and family, behind them the slowly setting sun illuminated the seal of the Northwest Volunteer Army engraved on the marble pillar that served as the flagpole for the Tricolor. The words on the seal seemed to glow with light and with life.

  Ex Gladio Libertas.

  Freedom comes from the sword.

  Table of Contents

  The Brigade

  Copyright © 2008 by H.A. Covington.

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Glossary of Northwest Acronyms and Terms

  I

  “I’ve Had Enough of What Ain’t Right!”

  II

  The Trouble Trio

  III

  In Shadow

  IV

  Valentine’s Night

  V

  Hunting The Hunters

  VI

  The Mami and the Monkey

  VII

  Someone Who Knows Who They Are

  VIII

  Running The Game

  IX

  Driving For The Boys

  X

  Sharkbait

  XI

  Hearing The Screams

  XII

  “Are You In Or Out?”

  XIII

  A Mouse In The House

  XIV

  Under New Management

  XV

  Ragnarok On Flanders Street

  XVI

  Things That Go Boom In The Night

  XVII

  Taking Down Tinsel Town

  XVIII

  All The World’s A Stage

  XIX

  A Star Is Suborned

  XX

  Setting The Scene

  XXI

  Must-See TV

  XXII

  Send Off The Clowns

  XXIII

  Into The Lion’s Den

  XXIV

  One If By Land, Two If By Sea

  XXV

  Comes The Dawn

  XXVI

  The Producers

  XXVII

  Two On The Bounce

  XXVIII

  The Butcher’s Bill

  XXIX

  “We Won!”

  XXX

  Names On The Wall