“. . . and of course when somebody offers him a cost-effective alternative fuel source—something that works, mind you, we’re living proof here—when somebody calls him with that and thinks maybe he could put his money where his oh-so-eloquent mouth is and ante up some government funding, what does Senator Mortimer Brubaker do? Why, he courageously refuses to return a phone call. And just what are you doing out here in the woods, Mr. Brubaker?”
I try to put on some publicspeak again, but all I can do is stammer out the same junk I told him before: that we got lost from our camp and are trying to find our way back. The guy doesn’t look like he really believes me, so instead I just spill it about how we ran away and are heading to California to see the Grizzlies show.
When I let him in on the state where the Grizzlies will play, Baldy does a double take. He puts his smile away and glances at Kang, whose eyebrows shrug. A thought seems to be filling Baldy’s dome. His eyes slowly grow bigger, and he blinks like he’s trying to hold them in. Then he lets out a breath and says, no, that wouldn’t be right because we’re just kids and it’s dirty pool.
Kang keeps pointing at us. Finally, the bald guy rubs his chin and says, “Well, we can’t just leave them in the woods, after all, can we?”
I don’t need to tell you how freaky this is, people. Somehow he can make sense of the weird gestures this Indian guy makes, which don’t look like sign language to me; it’s like seeing this guy talk to himself.
Baldy looks at his shoes. Then he looks back at me with another smile, this one sort of tired around the eyes, but a lot more friendly.
“You’re in luck,” he says. “You might say this is a very fortuitous coincidence, our crossing paths, Mr. Brubaker. We, too, are on our way to California. Here’s what we’re proposing: you ride along with us for just a little while longer, and we’ll drop you at the next town. In the meantime, we’ll let you in on all the secrets of the Tamzene. You see, the success of our voyage here is definitely something your father would be very interested in.”
There’s a lot of ganja stacked in the hold, I’m thinking. Maybe His Eminence is on a DEA oversight committee.
“Why?” I ask.
“Because of its potential alternative fuel source capabilities. The Tamzene, Mr. Brubaker, is powered by hemp. We’ve attempted to solicit help from Congress before but haven’t found the right channel for funding. But believe me, the Tamzene is an important invention, and being a part of its introduction to the world would be of great political importance to your father. Is it a deal?”
The whirring crickets sound like one of those flying cars from the Jetsons. Why don’t I just jump at the chance? What choice do we have, after all, out here among the trees and junk without a clue where we are? But I can’t shake the idea that the bald dude and the Indian aren’t pot dealers. I mean, who knows? Maybe we’re safer monster-treeing it alone. Maybe Kang and Baldy are making up a story just so we won’t put up a fight when they take us somewhere and off us.
On TV, it’s usually not hard to tell baddy from good guy. In Sniper Dude X, the EALs (Evil Assassin League) all wear black leather and have red eyes. But this is real time. The bald guy is just standing there with that tired-eye smile on his face, waiting for me to say something. He doesn’t look like a drug dealer, who TV says are mostly swarthy-looking guys with lots of bling and greased-back hair. This guy wears khakis like an army dude but has wild hippie hair under the bald, tangled gray that meshes into his muttonchops. His dome is full of smart wrinkles: horizontal lines streak across his forehead, and crow’s-feet sprout from the corners of his eyes.
“I don’t know,” I say after a minute.
“Okay,” he says. “At least hear my sales pitch. Maybe that’ll help you make up your minds.”
He opens a cabinet beneath the dashboard, and there sits a small color TV—the old-fashioned kind that looks like a big gray eye—and what I recognize as a VCR.
This just got better. I ask him if he has a satellite dish, because I’m thinking we can still catch the late-night Sniper Dude X repeat.
But that doesn’t seem like it’s on the program. Kang fumbles through boxes while Baldy drags two lawn chairs up from the hold and two bottles from a small refrigerator in the cabin and hands them to us. The bottles are full of green liquid.
“Don’t you have any Pepsi?” I ask.
He snorts. “Soft drinks? Never,” he says. “This is an organic concoction of citrus juices and seaweed concentrate. Try it. You’ll like it.”
“It’s green.”
“Sixteen years ago Coca-Cola said it would use recycled plastics in its bottles, but it never did. They use it in New Zealand, Australia, and Europe, but not in the US.”
“What about Pepsi?”
He smiles at me. “The human body stops making bone at age thirty. Soft drinks are found to have pH levels of 3.4 or higher. And they’re habit forming. Addictive poisons. Corporations want you weak and dependent. Seaweed citrus juice is delicious and promotes robust health.”
I haven’t had a thing to drink in a day and don’t realize how parched I am until the green stuff hits the back of my throat. It tastes like sugary grass. Arthur gulps his down in about two seconds and rips out a belch.
The bald guy hits the play button on the VCR. The screen flashes and the title appears: The Tamzene: Manifest Destiny, Part II.
The production quality isn’t Peter Jackson. It starts off with smog-covered cities, people wearing surgical masks, and smokestacks. Some guy I swear is the same dude who narrated the Importance of Hygiene DVD they made us watch in the fourth grade starts spewing statistics, like three million people worldwide die each year from causes related to air pollution. And it says the highway system is worse because automobiles emit 90 percent of the carbon monoxide and produce at least half of the pollutants that create smog. The guy on the tape says the answer to all these problems is the Tamzene and Doctor Marion Seabrook, which, it turns out, is the bald guy’s name. Then the video shows us how the boat works, how it runs on burning hemp and this other chemical for fuel. And it’s not just a boat—underneath there’s this rack thing with wheels on it, and the boat can actually drive over land on this hemp fuel for up to one hundred miles. “It has the cargo capacity of four large tractor trailers,” the video says, and a fleet of these things would greatly lessen the dependence on the trucking industry and fossil fuels. Finally, it says that Doctor Seabrook is taking the boat on its maiden voyage on rivers across the continental US.
“The Tamzene,” Seabrook says when the screen goes black, “is a prototype. After the success of her first voyage—once we’ve proven she’s the sort of vessel that can change not only the environmental but economic landscape in this country—we’re hopeful we can find investors and begin mass production. Of course, government subsidy and potential tax breaks for whoever the lucky bidder is would be advantageous to us, and this is where your father comes in.”
“So his office never called you back?” I ask. After all, His Eminence has a whole staff of cronies—mostly college kids—who field calls from people with ideas for stuff like superpowered windmills. They usually jot down the ideas, study them, give them each a ranking, and post them on a cork board in the Dirksen Senate office building marked Crackpot Ideas of the Week.
“Of course,” Seabrook says, “we made inquiries with several government offices and corporations. But without results, we’re just a pipe dream.” He smiles. “So, do we have a deal?”
“So what’s up with five-oh?” I ask. “Why are the cops after you?”
He frowns. He looks at the trees. “That’s not the police,” he mutters.
“DEA, then.”
“No,” he says. “To be honest I don’t know who they are.”
“Well, the name on the boats was the Green Police . . .”
He looks back at me and gives me this I-really-don’t-want-to-smile-but-I’ve-got-to-smile smile. “Let’s just say we’re not without enemies. Your dad, in Congress, he
has his share of enemies, doesn’t he? Well, it’s the same out here.” He looks back at the river.
Well, enemies I can understand. His Eminence often says tree huggers are a bigger threat to this country than any turban-clad wack job. Personally, I don’t agree with His Eminence—albeit most ordinary people would pick a nice parking lot over a shitload of monster trees any day, but how someone believing the reverse constitutes a threat doesn’t compute with me. And, since air pollution is foul, foul stuff, I can’t see how anybody would have a problem with somebody wanting a solution. I tell Seabrook so.
He shrugs. “They’ve merely thrown us off course. We’ll get back en route to California, but it will take some doing.”
“Why?”
“It’s not that simple, is it? Here, have a look at this.” From the long drawer under the steering wheel he pulls a large piece of paper. He turns it to face us, unfurling it, and it hangs over his knees. The map is called Rivers and Waterways of the US. On it, the old US of A looks like an animal—the head of the beast being Maine, Texas and Florida its legs, and California its butt. Rivers spider across it, forming streaks everywhere. They look like the beast’s skeleton.
“There are over fifty-one thousand miles of streams in the Mid-Atlantic Highlands alone! Then there are storm systems like this one blowing us off course. We run out of hemp every six months and have to get more, no simple task.” He smiles that uncomfortable smile again. “But it’ll be worth it, Mr. Brubaker. Someone needs to develop something to eliminate the fear, you see. Your dad could lead this effort, and we hope to give him the chance. It’s not just clean air that’s at play here, Mr. Brubaker. It’s economics. The Tamzene, if used to its potential, might threaten the US oil industry. The US economy is dependent upon oil; oil is its lifeblood. Take it away, and what happens? The economy and US industry sputter and die. Now what is an industry? Sounds like a nebulous sort of thing—big faceless factories and smokestacks and automobile assembly lines and all that. But an industry is really made up of people. People work those jobs. People need the economy. You take away the oil, take away the factories, and these people can’t support themselves. But somebody needs to show the world there’s a better way . . .”
He keeps rambling. He doesn’t talk to us like we’re kids, and he reminds me a hell of a lot of His Eminence. If His Eminence flipped his publicspeak to treehuggerdom, he’d be Seabrook. So it occurs to me that maybe this might be just what my trip needs: I’d get to see the show, and the my-son’s-a-lame-o looks from His Eminence would go the way of grunge music because I actually helped the man find a gimmick to further his political career. Yay me.
“Okay,” I tell him. “We’ll hang with you guys for a while.”
“Excellent,” Seabrook says. “Two standing rules: I am captain of this vessel, so when I tell you to do something, Mr. Brubaker, you are to follow my orders.”
Well, that sounds a little scary. My face must tell him that I think so, because he says, “Don’t worry. You’re our guests here. But I need to make sure you’re safe.”
“Okay,” I say.
“And secondly, I do not allow the practice of religion aboard this vessel.” Seabrook’s face darkens. “I am well aware of your father’s Evangelical leanings, Mr. Brubaker. And, like you said before, you came from a Christian camp. If you need to pray, I suggest you do so silently or wait until you’re ashore.”
I know full well that in the pocket of those khaki pants of his is a silver crucifix he can’t stop playing with. But as to His Eminence’s “leanings,” we only go to church for photo ops, and religious discussion only comes in press conferences.
“So the deal is you’re going to get a patent on this puppy and sell it for billions. Is that it?” I say.
He smiles, tired again. “Something like that.”
“Well, why else would you invent this thing?” I feel like I’m interviewing him for the Tonight Show.
“Well, there’s the fact that it really could help reduce emissions,” he says.
“And you did all this by yourself?”
He doesn’t answer. Arthur’s chin is dropping and resting on the speaker of his PA system. You can hear him snoring. The Indian’s eyes stay open, but he sits very still, and his breathing has grown deep.
Seabrook offers us sheets and blankets and says he plans to pilot the boat for several more hours, in case the white boats have regrouped and choose to search the area. He also gives Arthur a pad and pen. “So you can write messages instead of shouting through that thing at all hours,” Seabrook says.
Arthur and I huddle next to one another. Kang disappears into the long shadows cast by the boat, while Seabrook takes the wheel and pilots the craft out of the shoal.
Leaning on an elbow, Arthur scribbles on his pad and shoves it at me. I thought you said this guy was a drug runner?
“Well,” I whisper, “maybe he’s not.”
You’re not really thinking of hitching with this guy to California, are you?
“He’s heading in the right direction at the moment, at least,” I whisper. “I say we go with him for as long as we can. At least until we see some civilization.”
Arthur frowns. But how do you know that they aren’t drug dealers? Or that they won’t try something desperate? Or what if we meet up with those people again?
“Would you rather he leave us out here in the woods?”
Seabrook leans over the wheel and peers ahead, steering the boat between the trees into the night. Before I drift off, I watch his hand dart into his front pocket. Just for a second. Like he wants to make sure the crucifix is still there.
PART TWO
Bum Tribe
I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in every sound and sight around my house, an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant, and I have never thought of them since.
—Henry David Thoreau
CHAPTER SIX
the warning
Steel birds lined the valley floor in long rows.
The valley, which stretched for miles between twin green mountains, belonged to the steel birds, and the rumbling bears who rolled between them, and the men who lived in the box houses.
A fence of wire filed to sharpened points separated the valley from the mountains. Along the fence at intervals were large metal sheets with marks on them that looked like this:
Property United States Air Force
No Trespassing
Violators Will Be Fired Upon
The fence was not necessary. No other men lived in the green mountains that overlooked the steel birds’ valley, and the birds, deer, mice, bears, and squirrels who lived in the trees stayed away. The steel birds belched fire and made a terrible racket when taking flight, the rolling bears farted blue fumes, and the men carried guns.
The mountains were peaceful. Some of the animals had heard tales of men with guns killing animals for sport, of the foulness spread by men on other mountains. Here, the wire fence seemed to keep the men away. The animals drank from clear water that trickled down the mountainside and ate from the unspoiled greenery. Generations were spawned and lived entire lifespans, and when they died new generations formed. Some of the young ones still flinched when the steel birds roared through the valley, but even that had lessened with each succeeding bloodline, as if knowledge of the steel birds had become hereditary.
Then came the warning.
It came on the heels of a storm that rolled through the valley, as if it was actually part of the thunder, lightning, and rain. It blew through the mountains, within seconds shredding the old ways forever.
Before the warning, each animal was its own keeper; every desire or fear was the animal’s own. But the warning obliterated individuality. In an instant, thoughts of survival that had passed from generation to generation disappeared. A burst of whiteness swept acro
ss the animals’ minds, wiping clean each synapse, instinct, and memory.
What replaced them was a heightened awareness, as if each brain was no longer an individual consciousness but a collective whole.
They rose from burrows. Figures some had never seen before—haggard beasts with long teeth and razor claws, puffing and drooling; bears that had grown fat in their tranquility; deer with racks of sharpened antlers; even scrambling gray mice and squirrels—gathered together on the forest floor. Pile upon pile of moaning, snarling, chattering animals teemed until both hillsides swarmed with life. Overhead, birds rose flapping from every tree until they blotted out the sky.
The thought coursing through their collective consciousness made them all turn in unison toward the base of the mountain, down into the valley, and past the wire fence to where the steel birds sat, waiting.
And then they marched.
we head downriver
Hard work isn’t so bad. Back home, I did all I could to get out of the chores the Moms stuck me with. When she told me to straighten my room or tidy the bathroom, I told her my back hurt or I was so hungry I had the shakes or that I was so tired I felt like I was going to die.
But on the Tamzene, working’s just cool. It gives my thoughts a rhythm. Everything about the Tamzene is rhythm: the whoosh-whoosh of the engine, the sloshing of the creek against the hull. Even the work schedule has this ebb and flow, so that the harder we work, the better my head works.
Seabrook didn’t exactly ask us to start working when we woke this morning; he simply said matter-of-factly, “The hemp chamber is low and needs filling.” Then he looked at us with eyebrows raised, and Kang appeared from nowhere, motioning for us to follow.
For two hours we’ve been hauling bags of hemp up the stairs from the hold to the metal dome in front of the smokestack in the aft portion of the boat. Kang stands on a small platform just above the metal dome, takes the bags from us, tears them open, and dumps the contents into the metal chamber. Then he pokes them with a stick, seeking out seeds that might hurt the equipment by exploding during the heating process, as Seabrook explained.
We Are All Crew Page 5