We Are All Crew

by Bill Landauer

I go to the bathroom, your typical five-star shitter with marble floors and porcelain everything. I shower, watch the dirt streak off me, and wonder where the hell I am. I remember the faces of the men in the camp. The black uniforms. The lights on the poles. Then nothing.

  The hot water licks me like a big tongue. The field and the trees and the river outside the windows seem a million miles away. The stillness is strange. I can’t feel the wind anymore. The river’s fishy smell is gone, and the potpourri flowers make me queasy. The walls feel like they’re getting closer. I want to get out.

  The starchy clothes chafe me as I pull them on. I cross the bathroom in three steps and make it to the door out in five.

  When I open the door, I’m face-to-face with a moose.

  It freaks me out at first—seeing the antlers and the glassy, staring eyes—but then I realize it has no body. It’s one of those trophy heads attached to a piece of wood mounted on the wall. A little brass plate under the moose’s chin reads Cervus Elaphus Canadensis—The Eastern Elk.

  A hallway stretches to my right and left. Brass electric candles attached to the wallpapered walls every few feet emit the only light in the hallway. Other animal heads are mounted between the candles. Their eyes twinkle at me.

  I turn right and walk. After a while I see a woman in a dark pantsuit. She smiles at me. There are a few potted plants on the wall, but no place to hide.

  “Hi, Winthrop,” she says. “Enjoying your stay with us?”

  “I guess,” I say.

  “The director decided to let you sleep. She’s out on the range already. Go down the stairs and out the front door. Just keep walking straight and you’ll see her.”

  She turns and points down the hallway.

  I walk past her. She smiles the whole time—not like she’s a freaky-deaky psycho killer, but like she’s an employee working for tips or something. You see a lot of those smiles when you’re a congressman’s kid.

  White rails line the spiral staircase, which snakes down to a tile foyer. More animal heads hang over the old-fashioned hat racks and benches in the entryway. By the time I reach it, I’m walking fast because I really want to get outside and everything is feeling really close. I open the door and quickly step outside.

  I walk off the porch and out onto a brick driveway and look up at the big mansion where I’ve been. It’s built of yellow stone, and the windows are black. I keep backing up to try to get a better look at it, but it just keeps stretching, and eventually I back into the field.

  Tall grass rises and falls all the way down to a treeline way off in the distance. Beyond that is a river lined with a boardwalk. A handful of buildings huddle over the planks, and I see tables and chairs outside of a pair of restaurants—Le Gavroche and the Crab Shack.

  I walk into the field.

  After a while I crest a hill, and there’s a woman sitting there in the grass next to a boulder. She looks as big as a house and wears a wide-brimmed straw hat beneath a light green sash. A pale green sundress hangs from her shoulders. Or maybe it’s one of those muumuu things husky people wear.

  “Winthrop!” she says when she sees me. A pair of horn-rimmed glasses—the kind I guess they wore in the ’50s—pinch her large pink head. She struggles and sways back and forth four or five times and finally stands, heaving this grunt that makes her shake all over. It makes me feel bad for her, carrying all that extra weight.

  “I’m Maude Sweetwater. I’m a friend and admirer of your father.” Her voice is small and cute. She sticks out a big hand capped with dainty fingers. “I’m pleased as punch to meet you. We’re happy to have you out here with us at Locksley, dontchaknow. Come. Sit.”

  She squats again, and the air she sucked in to stand bellows outward. I sit cross-legged on the ground next to her.

  The little face at the center of her giant melon head is smiling. “We’ve phoned your father and told him that we found you and everything is all right. He’s sent for you. He’s been worried sick, dontchaknow.”

  Wimp Winthrop has locked my jaw. I am busted. Primrose will be a fond memory. Duseldorf Military School for Boys is something His Eminence waves around to scare me sometimes.

  “Before you leave, Winthrop, I thought I’d take the opportunity to show you around Locksley Ponds. We couldn’t have built old Locksley without your dad’s help in Congress,” she says.

  “What’s Locksley Ponds?”

  “Why, look around you, dear boy. This beautiful estate. Two hundred and seventy-seven acres. It’s a rather ingenious little revenue producer for us at the Green Police.”

  “You’re the Green Police?”

  She smiles again. “I’m the head bean, as it were. The CEO of our little organization.” She pats my elbow. “I just want you to know that, on behalf of all of us here, we apologize for everything you’ve gone through. If we’d known you were on that boat, Winthrop, we wouldn’t have . . . well, of course you know . . .”

  “What’s the Green Police?”

  “We’re what’s known as a government corporation, son. Kind of works like the Post Office, dontchaknow. We make a profit like a regular business, but our board is a congressional oversight committee, and people like myself are appointed by people like your dad.”

  We watch the grass. There’s no noise but the wind blowing through the tall blades.

  “You’re familiar with the passenger pigeon, aren’t you, Winthrop?” Her head had turns toward the mansion so I can see only the rear of her hat.

  “The passenger pigeon,” she repeats. “Ectopistes migratorius. Once it was the most common bird on the planet. Their flocks were a mile wide and three hundred miles long. People say they blotted out the sun for days, huge black storm fronts full of birds, just moving across the sky.”

  She turns and smiles at me again.

  “Then came the Industrial Revolution. Deforestation. Growth of cities across the countryside. Not to mention those birds were good eating, so people just walked out and shot ’em down, like picking apples off a tree. About 1850 or so, their populations started to dwindle. Public reports have it that the last of the passenger pigeons died off in a zoo in Cincinnati in 1914. Amazing, isn’t it? How something once so plentiful over a period of sixty-four years of serious industrial growth could be completely wiped away.” She sighs. “Ah, the innocents always suffer for the wheels of mankind.”

  In the distance, I hear thunder. I scan the skyline: nothing but blue and little white clouds as far as I can see.

  “Of course, the passenger pigeon wasn’t really extinct, Winthrop. In the 1930s it was discovered that a wildlife collector name Aloysius Sims from Wausau, Wisconsin, had three such birds in captivity. Male and female. And he was attempting to revive the species.”

  The rolling thunder in the distance seems louder now, and more sustained.

  “Well, of course government scientists wanted to study the bird, so they secured Mr. Sims’s collection. In 1942, a secret breeding project was launched to see if it was possible to repopulate the species under federal protection in remote areas.”

  Above the river, a black cloud appears at the edge of the trees. The cloud grows larger and larger, and what sounds like a freight train a mile off chugs toward us.

  “Imagine—bringing back this species to where it once was! Of course, one has to be careful what one tells the public, dontchaknow.If one were to tell people about the passenger pigeon, the government would be expected to enter in whenever any species is about to meet its maker and interrupt the natural flow of things. So in 1975, our covert ops took charge of the passenger pigeon project.”

  The cloud balloons to a massive storm front the size of a city. It towers over us, blotting out the sun.

  They’re birds—gray birds with reddish bellies and purple eyes. Millions of them. The flapping of their wings creates a roar.

  “Look at them, Winthrop! Passenger pigeons,” Sweetwater says through her pink smile over the roar. “Do you believe that we actually once had to grab them from the j
aws of extinction?”

  Millions of them are flying over my head. I’ve never seen so many birds in one place, people. Maybe Seabrook has the Green Police all wrong. If they’re able to bring back something like this bird that died off, they can’t be all bad.

  “They’ll be worth millions in accounts for us,” Sweetwater says. She reaches down into the weeds where she’s kneeling and picks up a black AK-47 machine gun.

  She raises it to the sky and fires off several rounds into the cloud of birds.

  Gray lumps fall like rain. Sweetwater fires in sweeping arcs. With each arc, twenty birds fall from the sky and plop on the ground.

  I wig.

  “Aw, tenderhearted lad, aren’t you,” she says, laughing. “Well, why do you think we’ve raised them, Winthrop? This is what we do here at Locksley. We’ve saved thirty so-called extinct species on our ranch here. Lesser fruit bats, African cats, several varieties of mountain lion. It’s a rather ingenious revenue producer. For a $700,000 fee, our guests can come here to hunt them.

  “We put the hunters up in suites here at Locksley,” Sweetwater goes on, seeming to add figures in her head, “at $2,000 a night. Additional fees for taxidermy services and facilities in the basement where they can clean their kill, plus an additional $20,000 for each passenger pigeon and fruit bat killed. $50,000 for your larger mammals. And of course, for the restaurant in Locksley’s dining room and our two riverfront eateries, we skim a few animals such as these to fill out the menu, where a plate costs more than your average sitting at the Big Boy, let me tell ya.

  “The Senate—thanks to your dad—approved it ten years ago in the budget omnibus. Granted, it’s not our charter business, but this is sideline revenue that we use to fund our programs. It brings in nearly $10 million a year, dear boy. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how popular the novelty is of hunting species previously thought to be extinct—especially among the fiscally elite.”

  Sweetwater raises a walkie-talkie to her lips. “Okay, Somes. Bring the choppers in and collect them. I’ll let you know when we’re ready for another release. Over.”

  “Ten-four,” a voice crackles.

  I stare at the gray lumps on the ground. One of the lumps is struggling in the grass. The black cloud overhead has mostly passed by, and the sun blazes down once again.

  “I’m wondering if you can help me with something,” she says. “Before your mom and dad get here.”

  I don’t say anything. I mean, the gun is seriously badass, and ordinarily I’d be asking to take a turn myself, but for some reason this whole thing has made me feel like puking.

  “You’ll be happy to know we’ve taken your captors prisoner,” she says.

  “You’re not going to hurt them, are you?” I ask. “Doctor Seabrook, he doesn’t mean to hurt anybody, he invented this—”

  “They aren’t going to harm you anymore, you can rest easy about that,” Sweetwater says, looking away from me. “Doctor Seabrook is a dangerous psychotic, and his associate, Jorge Zaniga . . .”

  “Who?”

  The pink smile returns. “Told you his name was Kang, did he? In my day we called that type of fellow a Pretendian—somebody who pretends to be Native American. He’s a known con man—”

  “No.”

  She ignores me. “—wanted in his home state of Arizona for fraud, dontchaknow. Your dad assured us that you’d cooperate with us, Winthrop. The trouble is, we’re having a hard time finding that illegal boat. Can you help us?”

  “The Tamzene? You mean you didn’t find it? Where are my friends? Where’s Esmerelda?”

  She frowns. “Who?”

  They must not have captured her. “No one,” I say.

  “Winthrop?” she continues to frown. “Who is Esmerelda?”

  “She’s just this girl.” My heart is pounding in my ears. “She hitched a ride with us for a while. Actually, come to think of it, she must have gotten out back when we were in that town with the TV.”

  “Would you be able to describe her?” she asks.

  “Sure,” I say. “So you guys can’t find the Tamzene?”

  Sweetwater chuckles. “This is a slippery bunch you helped us capture here, Winthrop,” she says. “They managed to hide this thing. Now, you were with them for days, young man, and I’m sure you’ve learned some of their MO. What do you say? Are you willing to help us out?”

  “Look, I think somebody is making a mistake here. Doctor Seabrook isn’t a bad dude, and this boat thing, I mean, I think it’s a good thing and it really works.”

  She smiles and clucks her tongue. “Oh my,” she says. And then the moving bird catches her eye.

  “I understand how you feel, Winthrop. Happens sometimes when somebody spends too much time in captivity.”

  “No, you don’t understand. Doctor Seabrook and Kang helped me, they didn’t—”

  “I believe it’s called the Stockholm syndrome,” she says, grunting to her feet again and raising her rifle. She smiles that pink smile. “Maybe it’s time for somebody to watch a little television.”

  She stands over the wounded bird. A bullet has nicked its wing, rendering it flightless, and it tries to hop away from her. She clucks her tongue again.

  “Poor thing. Suffer the innocents for the wheels of mankind.”

  She raises the gun, points the muzzle at the ground, and fires.

  the river

  It was as though the river had regained its youth. In its younger days, it had been mighty, wide, and deep. Age upon age of dry seasons had withered it, shrinking it to a mere trickle, a dry bed in some places.

  Now, for a purpose it did not entirely understand, it was necessary for the old river to become young again. Sustained cloudbursts soaked the cracked bed, replenishing gullies, pouring down from mountainsides. Before long, the river stretched out to its original banks.

  And it carried cargo. Swept along on its now vast waters was what to it was little more than a twig. But the river knew to take great care with this, an unmanned—but man-made—craft. A tall, odd-looking boat, with a strange metallic mushroom attached to it.

  It carried the boat around its bends and eased it through its rapids, no matter how playful the river felt.

  cougar scouts

  The trees glow, as if lit from inside. Every leaf is so sharp it hurts my eyes. There are thousands of them, and they stretch all the way to the horizon, rising and falling over mountain peaks, each one bright as a fluorescent bulb. They throw themselves up to the electric blue sky, which is so phosphorescent that it sweeps through my mind, wiping everything clean. Soon, there’s only the sky and the trees.

  “The Appalachian Mountains,” says a deep voice that rumbles in through my ears, down my spinal cord, and bleeds into every nerve ending. “Untouched. Virginal. Beautiful.”

  The scene changes to a close-up of a tree. An eagle perches on a limb. I can make out each of the small fibers in its feathers. Its black eyes look into me just before it raises its wings and takes flight.

  “But unforgiving,” the voice continues. “Like the sirens of old, the verdant Appalachians have beguiled men, punished them, and lured them to their doom. Since the beginning of time, nature has stirred unnatural feelings within man. Nature has been his undoing, his weakness. It fills his mind with wonders, but offers no sanctuary. Nature is the enemy of mankind. Its attacks are seldom conventional, always merciless, always devastating.

  “August, 79 AD. Pompeii, a thriving jewel in the Roman Empire’s crown, was living in a golden age of civilization, until Mount Vesuvius erupted, encasing thousands in molten rock.

  “1201 AD. 1.1 million people in Syria and Egypt die in the worst earthquake in recorded history.

  “1587. One hundred British men, women, and children settle in Roanoke, Virginia. Three years later, they vanish.

  “1887. Nine hundred thousand die when China’s Yellow River bursts through its dams.

  “Tsunamis. Droughts. Vicious, killer animals. Disease. Nature has many weapons in
her arsenal, deadly and unstoppable. Nature is the enemy of civilization, and civilization is the enemy of nature.”

  Blinds slide up the windows, willed by unseen motions. We’re in a darkened parlor somewhere within Locksley Ponds. The last rags of daylight are burning in the sky.

  Time and place occur to me in short bursts.

  “Please, turn the TV back on again,” I say.

  “No,” says the blurry thing standing between me and the TV. “No, Winthrop. Too prolonged an exposure can result in acute addiction and mental incapacitation. Secretary Sweetwater said you’re in need of mild reconditioning, but we want you lucid when your parents arrive. Which means we’re going for a walk. Up now.”

  The blurry thing grabs me by the wrists and hoists me out of my chair. We go out into the blinding pink light and march. Soft grass purrs beneath my black wing tips. I throw a look back over my shoulder and see the big yellow mansion receding—and along with it, the TV.

  The blurry thing is a man in a black uniform. Somewhere, underneath the big desire to go back and watch more TV, it occurs to me what he is.

  “You are the Green Police,” I say.

  He smiles. “That’s right.”

  We walk on, and everything is dull: the sun leaning on the river, the grass, the trees, the rifle slung across his back, the picture of the snarling cat on his chest.

  The snarling cat picture seems important. I can’t imagine why—sure, it would look nice on the TV, but other things would be more impressive on the high-def. Then I recognize it: the patch, the thing in His Eminence’s office.

  The man hums:When the lightning flashes and the thunder rolls, I will not yield. I will stand fast and resolute.

  The man is humming the Grizzlies.

  “Are you a fan of the Greatest Band on Earth?” I ask him.

  “Excuse me?”

  “That song. The Red Grizzlies.”

  “What song?”

  “The one you’re humming.”

  He laughs. “That’s one of the songs the CO taught us in basic. Fancied himself a songwriter. It’s an earworm, I’ll give it that.”

  “The CO?”