by Mackey, Jay
I’ve played around with the sights while I’ve been hunting. We did a fair amount of deer hunting over the fall and winter. If it weren’t for the deer we shot, I don’t know that we would have had enough for all of us to eat. I shot four. Ted—Mr. Mathews, Mia’s stepfather—got two, and Mia got one. Dad got one. And my little brother Clark got one when I took him out one day and taught him to use my rifle. He was really stoked.
The deer were good eating. And since it was winter, and really cold a lot of the time, we could freeze the meat outside and save it. Not like now, in the heat of the summer, when if somebody slaughters a pig or a cow, then it’s got to be eaten pretty quickly so it doesn’t spoil. So what happens is that if one farmer slaughters an animal, the whole neighborhood is eating good for a while. Nobody wants to take down one of their animals unless they have to, so that doesn’t happen all that often.
I put my rifle down on the hill, near where I’ve shot from before. It’s about 500 yards from the downed tree near the river. I go down and draw a couple targets on the grayed-out tree with a marker. I go back up and adjust the telescopic sight on my rifle because it’s a little windy today, take a couple shots, go down and check to see where my shots hit. Go back up, repeat. And again. When I’m satisfied with my grouping, I pace back another 100 yards and do it all again. It’s slow work, requiring a lot of patience. But the good thing is that it requires absolute concentration, at least in spurts, so I calm way down. I’m sure my blood pressure is about half of what it was when I started.
Friday, I make a ride into Lafayette. It’s the first time I’ve been in all week. I’m not supposed to meet with Jake and Flip again until next week, and I’ve been avoiding seeing Rachel, given how we left things last time we were together. But I’ve got some deliveries to make and decide to stop by and see how she’s doing.
I get my answer very quickly. Not good.
She and Rob are in the kitchen when I walk in—I don’t usually knock, since it’s basically my second home. Rachel looks in my direction, but doesn’t acknowledge me. She finishes whatever she is talking to Rob about, turns, gives me a little fake smile, and goes to her room.
“Fuck,” I say under my breath.
Rob hears me and says, “Don’t worry. She’ll come around. I know my sister, and she can hold a grudge for a while, but she always comes around eventually. How are you doing?”
“Oh, I’m okay, I guess. I just wish I knew what I’d done that was so bad. I mean, I said something like things were okay before all these new laws, and bam. She’s pissed.”
“Yeah, well. Hang in there.”
I do, at least until after we’ve had something to eat and Rachel and I take a little walk down toward the well to get some water for morning. Really though, we both know we’re finding a way to have a private talk. Neither of us is willing to break the ice until she says, “I’ve been thinking.”
“Okay.”
“I think we need a break.”
So, I’m not a total idiot. I know that means she’s breaking up with me. “Because I said things were better before we got Pounds and Wayne and all these assholes.”
“No. That’s not it.” She slows her walking pace. I’m carrying the bucket, so I keep moving toward the well. “I really like you,” she says to my back.
“Okay. But . . .”
“You’re fun to be with. Easy to talk to. I know you care about me.”
“But . . .” I’m at the well, but I don’t start the generator, leaving the bucket on the ground.
“Things are going to get better someday.”
“I hope so.”
“They will.” She walks toward me and reaches out and touches my chest. “They have to.”
I have no idea where she’s going with this, so I don’t say anything. I look at her hand on my chest. I want to grab it, hold on to it. But I don’t.
“When things are better, I have dreams. Plans. I want to be a doctor.” She takes her hand off my chest. She’s now looking more at the well than at me.
“I have dreams too.”
“Do you? That’s the problem. I don’t know if you do. I don’t know if you have the ambition to do anything more than what you’re doing.”
“Of course I do.”
“What? What are your dreams?” She looks at me now. Gets close. Looks into my eyes. I can see her eyes are watery. “What do you want to do with your life?”
I’m getting pissed now. It’s like we’ve never talked before. Is she lecturing me? Is she my mother? I take a step back, but then lean toward her and say, “I’LL FIGURE IT OUT.”
She clamps her mouth shut. I see a tear roll down her cheek. She turns and runs back to her house.
I get the water and follow her. Slowly.
20
66 days until the Pulse Anniversary
If Mom thought I was moping around last week, then I wonder what she thinks about me this week. I have a hard time even getting out of bed. I miss some deliveries, too, which I never do. On Thursday, one of my relatively new but regular customers showed up at my house with a Radio Flyer wagon loaded with used plastic water bottles filled with liquid soap that he made. He’s recently found a way to make the soap, which he says is better for washing dishes and clothing than bar soap, which is what’s been commonly used for almost all cleaning when relief shipments of other cleaning products runs out. He’s pissed that I haven’t been by to pick up the load, which he says he needs to have delivered to a shop in Lafayette by tomorrow.
So, on Friday I reluctantly drag my ass out of bed and prepare for a ride to town. Actually, I’m also scheduled to meet with Jake and the resistance crew again, so I have to go anyway.
When Mom sees me with my backpack, getting ready to leave, she says something that sounds snarky, like, “It’s about time you moved your ass,” but she kind of mumbles it so I’m not sure that’s what she actually said and I ignore it. Then she stops me just as I’m about to go out the door and says, “Wait. I have a bundle of radishes and some herbs for you to take to Franci.” That’s Rachel’s mom, Franci DuBonnette.
As she turns to go into the kitchen to get the stuff, I say, “Um, Mom. I’m not planning to go to Mrs. DuBonnette’s place today.”
She stops and turns back to look at me, her eyebrows pinched together, showing her lack of understanding. “But why . . .” Her eyebrows lift as she seems to guess what’s going on.
“Yeah,” I say, and look at the ground so I don’t have to meet her stare. “Rachel and I are kind of . . . We broke up.”
Now she has a completely different look on her face as she rushes at me and grabs me in a big Mom hug. “I’m so sorry,” she says as she squeezes. “I thought there was something going on. That’s why I left you alone. I just knew it was something.”
I let myself get squeezed.
“What happened?” she asks as she releases her grip and takes a step back.
“I don’t know. Nothing. Just. Nothing.”
“Is there something I can do? Are you coming home tonight? I’ll make you a nice dinner.”
“No. It’s okay, Mom. I’m okay.”
“You don’t look okay. You’ve not been acting okay.”
“Just . . . I don’t want to make an even bigger deal out of this. I just wish . . .”
She stands in front of me, staring. Then she heads for the kitchen again. “Will you do me one favor?”
“Sure. I guess. What?”
She comes back with two bags. “Take these to Franci, please. She’ll appreciate them, and it’ll give you an excuse to stop by. Who knows?”
“I don’t need an excuse, Mom,” I say, but I reach out and take the bags. “If I want to stop by, I’ll stop by. It’s not like Rachel and I hate each other.” I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it sounds good.
She pats me on the back as I leave. A motherly love pat.
After I’ve made my delivery in Lafayette, I head back across the Wabash River to West Lafayette and to the apartmen
t where I’d met with Jake, Rick and Flip two weeks ago. I don’t know what to expect, but I’m hoping it doesn’t have anything to do with shooting anyone. I’m really kind of hung up on that. I’ve got enough nightmares as it is. And now with the Rachel thing, I’m lucky if I get any sleep at all.
Jake walks up to the apartment about the same time I do, so we go in together. Flip opens the door to us, and when we go in, we find the little apartment crammed with people. I see Rick, standing against the far wall, and several others who look like students. But the majority are just people—a few older, maybe forties or fifties, most younger than that, men, women, black, white, brown—a real cross-section. I’m not even the youngest; I see one girl who can’t be more than about thirteen.
Jake and I squeeze in past a large woman and find a place to stand in a corner near the front window. The window is open, but there’s little breeze, and it’s sweltering in here.
We’re facing a woman who’s standing at the end of the dining area. The table and chairs have been pushed back against the wall and people are sitting on the floor.
The woman holds up her hands and says, “Welcome, everyone. I promise this is the only time we’ll all have to meet here, but for now it’s all we have.” She is a tall, absolutely beautiful black woman.
“We’re all here today for a couple reasons. Well, make that three,” she says. “First, is so that I can meet as many of you as possible. Second, I guess, is so you can meet me, and put a face to the name. Mine is Shoshanna Reynolds, but you can call me Shanna. I’m one of the group that started RIP some months ago, and I’ll probably be around this area a lot, so you’ll see me and hear me. I’m told I have a loud voice.” That draws a laugh from the crowd.
“Third, we have a high-priority petition drive.” She reaches her hand out to a college age kid standing next to her, who hands her a sheet of paper that she holds up above her head.
“I know that most of you are aware that our immediate goal is to get elections for our government representatives. We have other, longer term goals as well, but free and fair elections is the issue that drove the founding fathers in the 1770s, and it’s the issue that’s driving us today.”
She puts down the paper on the table in the corner and starts talking about some of the other issues she says were the reasons that RIP was founded. Among them are prejudice and intolerance, and that’s where name came from, Resist Intolerance and Prejudice.
She says we’ve lost ground since the pulse, that discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, race and religion shouldn’t be tolerated. “Actually, some of these are bigger problems in other parts of what used to be the USA, but we’re not limiting ourselves only to the RNA.”
She has a low voice, and I’m so taken with it that I find myself paying more attention to how she talks than on what she’s saying. It’s not a long speech, and she ends by picking up the piece of paper again and shaking it.
She says, “I want each of you to take a stack of these petitions and get your friends, family, neighbors and anyone you can to sign it. We intend to present a hundred thousand signatures to President Pounds in about two weeks, so I need you to hustle. Get these signed, and back here to Flip no later than one week from today.” She looks around the room for a minute, and then says, “Questions?”
Immediately, people start talking. Several raise their hands. She calls on a couple people who ask questions about the petitions. I can’t hear the questions, but her answers are things like where on the page to sign, and that signers have to be of voting age, which she says will be considered to be eighteen.
Then someone standing near me asks if she thinks the petition will be successful.
“It will be successful in that it will alert the president that there is a large group of people out here that want elections. I seriously doubt that it will be enough to get him to hold them.”
“So what are the next steps?” asks someone.
“Yeah, are we gonna march and hold protests, or what?” asks someone else.
She smiles and says, “The short answer is yes, we’ll probably hold some actions down the road. But let’s see what response we get first. Okay? Think of this as a shot across the bow, to wake them up. We’ll see what happens then, and we’ll take appropriate steps.”
People start standing and talking, so I guess the meeting is over.
I lean over toward Jake and say, “Pretty short meeting.”
He says, “Not really a meeting. She just wanted to hand out those petitions. I’ll introduce you to her when the crowd thins down. She’s a pretty impressive woman.”
“So you know her?”
“Yeah. For quite a while. She used to teach history down at IU. Came up here one summer to do some post-grad work.”
We wait for most of the people to get their stack of papers, chat with Shanna and then leave. When it’s our turn, Jake introduces me as a friend from the war. As she shakes my hand I notice that her fingers are really long, and I find that very sensual. I’d be very tempted to make what would probably be a very awkward attempt to come on to her except for the fact that she’s probably about forty. Her hair, which is quite short, clipped close to her head, is going gray. She could easily be my mother’s age. But wow!
“Nice to meet you, Shoshanna,” I say, and immediately feel like an idiot. I should have said something clever.
“Call me Shanna,” she says, and hands me a stack of the papers.
I look at the stack. There are at least twenty sheets here, and each has a place for, let’s see, fifty names, front and back. That’s one thousand names.
“You don’t have to fill in every blank,” says Shanna, smiling at me. I guess she saw the look on my face as I checked out the petitions. I smile back and say, “Good. I don’t think there are that many people in the Juniper area.” Man, I bet I come up with better lines later, when it’s too late.
“Good to meet you, Brady,” she says. Then, turning to Jake, she says, “And good to see you, Jake. I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of each other soon.”
He nods and says, “I’m sure we will.”
As we’re walking out, I say to Jake, “So is that what this is, a political group? Petitions, protests, marches, that kind of thing? I sure got a different impression when it was just you, Flip and Rick. I mean, RIP? That sounds like it’s about death.”
“It’s not a name I would have picked. It does sound a little scary, doesn’t it? It is more than a political group, but less than a terrorist or guerilla group, I’d say. Shanna is a bit of a politician. She’s been active with labor unions in the past, for example. But others in the group are more aggressive, more willing to work in the shadows, shall we say.”
“By ‘in the shadows’ do you mean shooting people?’
“God, I hope not.”
After Jake and I say our goodbyes I have to face the idea of going to Rachel’s. It’s still pretty early in the day, so I’m hoping that she’s not home.
I’m in luck. When I get there Wilson is the only one home. He says he closed up the shop to take a break. There was some guy, a customer, who was giving him a hard time.
He says, “So I fixed his flat, put a patch on the tube. When I asked for payment, he says, ‘How about a little action?’ So I say, ‘What?’ And he leans over the counter like he’s trying to kiss me. I ask him what he’s doing, and he’s all, ‘Hey, I understand you like boys. Well, I’m a good-looking dude. How about it? A little roll in the hay for a bike tire?’”
Wilson is shaking his head. I’m about to start laughing, but this is clearly not funny for him.
He says, “This guy is like thirty-five, way overweight. A big fucker. He was clearly trying to catch me, maybe turn me in for being gay. I don’t know. But it scared the shit out of me.”
“What did you do?”
“I tried to laugh it off. Told him that he’d heard wrong. I said, ‘Do I look like a guy that likes boys?’ Said I’d like chits, thank you, but you can save y
our kisses for somebody who likes that kind of thing.”
“Wow. But there’s no law against being gay. They can’t arrest you for that.”
“It’s a slippery slope, Brady. They’ve outlawed gay marriage. Implied that gay sex is against God’s laws. Next, just being gay will get the death penalty. It’s your buddies, Wayne and Williams, man. They’re out to get us.”
“Not my buddies, Wilson. Sorry, though.”
I have him sign a petition, although he scoffs at it for being a waste of time and energy.
He takes the food I brought, thanks me. I leave before Rachel gets home. And all the way home I’m wondering if maybe RIP is capable of helping people like Wilson. Not just getting new elections so we can pick leaders who’d pass reasonable laws, but do something to keep him safe from harassment or worse right now.
Over the next several days I get Clark and Claire to help me get people to sign the petitions. I’m a little surprised that quite a few people are reluctant to sign them. Some say that they don’t know anything about the sponsoring group, Resist Intolerance and Prejudice. Others say that signing the petition will just enable the government to identify them as anti-government troublemakers, so they don’t want their names to appear on anything. A few say it’s all a waste of time. But between us, we manage to get over three hundred signatures, and I’m satisfied with that, given how much resistance we had.
On Friday I make the trip in to Lafayette to deliver my petitions. Jake told me last week to just meet him at the cafeteria at our usual time, and he’d make sure the petitions got to the right place. I spot him sitting at a table not far from the door. A girl is sitting at his table. A girl with her back to me. But she looks familiar. Jake says something to her and she turns toward me as I near the table. Wait. Rachel?
