The Spirit of Resistance

by Michael J. Scott

  “I’m so sorry, Peter.”

  I held him and said nothing. It was a long time before we parted.

  ***

  The Knapps took us in. I sorta thought they would. Fact is, they insisted, like we had no choice in the matter. Jerry made room for us on his floor and we rolled out our sleeping bags. We always stored the camping gear in the barn. Good thing. I just wish we’d have kept our pillows there. I was left with a lumpy spare I was sure would give me a crick in my neck.

  That first night I had vibrant dreams of Martin burning up with the house. I could see him standing in the front hallway, fire circling his legs, torso and arms. He was pointing at me and saying something, but I couldn’t hear it. I tried to rush him and put out the flames, but I caught fire, too.

  When I woke up, darkness filled the room. I could still smell the smoke.

  Twenty-Seven

  Next morning Jerry cornered me in the bathroom while I was brushing my teeth. He shut the door and locked it before appraising me in the mirror.

  “So what really happened?”

  I spat in the sink. “What do you think?” I snapped. “Sorry, that came out harder than I meant.”

  “S’alright. Did he do it?”

  I blasted the water so no one could hear us. Bracing my arms on the sink, I tried to answer.

  He shook his head. “Damn.”

  I didn’t need to say a thing.

  “Is it my fault?”

  “How would it be your fault?”

  “If I hadn’t been ice-fishing, you wouldn’t have come looking for me. You could’ve been home to stop him.”

  “You think I could’ve stopped him?”

  “Guess not.”

  I stared at my reflection, not even seeing Jerry anymore. This bathroom reeked femininity. Clearly the work of Mary Knapp. No man would put a latch hook rug over his toilet tank, let alone a hot pink one. The rug on the seat cover and floor matched as well. She’d continued the theme with hot pink fairies with bulbous eyes peering down at the sink and flowers painted on the shower curtain. I half-expected to come out of there smelling like a frickin’ perfume bottle.

  I missed our bathroom. Even with its clogged showerhead.

  “This thing’s taken over. It’s consumed us. Just like that fire.” I snorted. “He made sure he got the guns out, you know? And my computer. All the stuff we need to finish it. But only that. Everything else is gone.”

  “Makes sense.”

  I whirled on him. “How the hell does any of this make sense?”

  “I’m just saying, you know, from his perspective...”

  I swore and left the room.

  ***

  Back in the bedroom, Martin was just putting down his cell phone when I walked in. He sat on the floor and leaned back against the wall, knees bent, staring at the ceiling.

  “That was Grant,” he said.

  “What’s Grant want?” I muttered, pulling on my shirt.

  “We’re taking the guns down to D.C. this week, start scouting for positions.”

  “Why so soon?”

  “Sooner we get them down there the better. Security’s only going to tighten in the run up to the inauguration. Hell, it’s bad enough as it is.”

  “You tell him about the fire?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “What he say?”

  “Good move.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Mary says breakfast is in ten. Wait, did you say this week?”

  He nodded.

  “Why?”

  “Christmas is as good a time as any. In fact, it might even be better. Most folks will be too busy stuffing their faces and singing ‘Jingle Bells’ to care what we’re up to.”

  “This was supposed to be our first Christmas together in four years. I can’t believe you’d just blow it off.”

  “It’s just a holiday. It’s not like I believe in Santa Claus.”

  “What about Jesus?”

  “Jesus?”

  “Yeah, you know? Keeping Christ in Christmas and all that? I mean, it’s His birthday.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Well, He’ll have another. He’s eternal, ain’t He? Not like we can’t afford to miss one. Besides, you got yer Christmas present. And don’t take this wrong, but I really don’t need a sweater.”

  I shook my head in exasperation and left the room.

  ***

  After breakfast I grabbed my laptop and escaped into my car. I’d told them I was going to do some writing, but that was probably a lie. I think I meant to do some. Sort of. Probably not. I didn’t really know what I was going to do. I just knew I had to get away from all of them.

  I drove around for a while, and wound up at our old house. The ruins weren’t smoldering anymore. A heavy snow had fallen in the night, and now the blackened timbers lay half-buried and askew—the inspiration of some monochromatic Jackson Pollack nightmare. I wandered around the edges of it, kicking at fragments of siding or shards of glass. Now, without the house standing here, the whole place felt small and confining. Cramped even. I wondered how it had managed to contain our lives for so long.

  It wasn’t fair. None of it was.

  Mom should not have died, leaving Dad to raise us on his own. But even Dad shouldn’t have died before we were ready to leave. I shouldn’t have failed in my writing. Martin shouldn’t have gotten shot, and our house shouldn’t have burned down. None of this should have happened at all.

  But it did.

  I shoved my hands in my pockets and stamped my foot.

  Losing the house was just the tip of the iceberg. It was easy to blame Martin for that. After all, he set the candle in the window. But Jerry was right. In a perverse way, Martin’s actions made sense. He may have lit the candle, but something else lit him.

  I supposed I could blame Dad, but what would the sense in that be? It just pushed the truth further away. Dad was lit, too. Come to think of it, so was I, after a fashion. From what I’d seen at the militia campground, and the growing page views on my blog, we weren’t the only ones.

  Seemed like the whole country was lit.

  Something was fundamentally wrong with the world. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but it was the same sort of thing that drove postal people over the wall, or enticed kids to bring guns to school and start blasting away. It was like something oppressive and cruel had taken over and was driving us mad.

  I remembered, when all the school shootings swept through the country, that I’d been horrified and scared—wondering when some nutbag was gonna come into my classroom and start blasting away at us. But I also remembered thinking what it must’ve been like to be on the other side of that gun—to be the one pulling the trigger, to have each explosion punctuating the statement I was making. What that must’ve felt like. I envied their ecstasy, and I lied to myself about how much I hated thinking that way.

  Maybe it should all burn. I’d read enough Freud to recognize this at least. All my protests to the contrary were nothing more than the program of civilization telling me what to feel, the superego rebuking the ego for the cravings of the id. Maybe what I really wanted was to pick up that gun and blow that frickin’ bastard away, to keep shooting till it was all gone, and there was no one left to tell me what to feel, or who to be, or how to live.

  But who the hell was I to be so free? For that matter, who did Martin think he was? Or Grant? Or even Jerry?

  But then, who were we not to be?

  I puffed out a breath of air into the gray sky. God, what was wrong with me? Going around killing people—blowing them away—tearing down the very fabric of society—that’s what crazy people did. Sane people kept their heads down, followed the rules, obeyed orders. I wasn’t crazy, was I?

  I shook my head and turned toward the barn. If anyone saw me out here talking to myself, they’d think I was. Might even call the cops.

  Pulling open the barn doors, I stepped into its shadows. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust. Splinters of light broke through the sidin
g and poured through the vents in the roof. I inhaled the smell of earth and old wood, tinged now with the musk of our burnt-out home, but clean and good in its own way.

  Around me, the decrepit implements of a time long gone hung on the walls. An old scythe. The remains of a spinning wheel. A couple of hand-held sickles. A broken grindstone, anvil, and forge moldered in the corner. Used to be a man lived in utter self-reliance. He sewed his own clothes, grew his own food, killed his own meat. He’d build his house with his own bare hands, and no one could come around to tell him otherwise. If it wasn’t sturdy it’d fall down, and he’d have to build it over again, but he’d have no one to blame but himself.

  Now other men built our homes, grew our food, killed our meat, all under the watchful eyes of bureaucrats with their rules and their formulas. Nietzsche called them the last men, people bereft of real passion and contented with cheap comforts. ‘We have invented happiness’ say the last men, and they blink. That’s what we’d become. Even hunting wasn’t survival. It was sport. Nobody really needed to do it, and it was getting damn expensive anyhow. Society had made it easy to be a man. Except that it wasn’t. All you had to do was work in a box for a paycheck, and pay someone else to do what bureaucrats wouldn’t let you do for yourself.

  But that wasn’t living. And it wasn’t being a man.

  Stepping around our dirt bikes, long ignored in the back, I reached the crawl space, knowing it had been my destination the whole time. Climbing up the ladder, I turned and sat on the crossbeam. The attic crawl space stretched out before me. Two eight-inch planks formed a narrow walkway no more than four feet high beneath part of the roofline. I wished I’d brought a flashlight with me. Dusty cobwebs dangled brazenly from the rafters, while the chewed-up nest of some critter collected mold in a corner.

  Stepping across the gap, I ducked into the crawl space and worked my way forward. It was much darker up here, and I peered into each alcove for a while before moving on, unsure whether or not the guns were stashed within. About halfway to the front of the barn, I discerned two elongated shapes lurking in the shadows. I stepped over to one and touched it, feeling the smooth, cold finish of the rifle barrel beneath my fingertips.

  Gently, I picked it up and set it in my lap, feeling the weight resting across my knees.

  It had felt so good shooting this gun. Or maybe its brother. I couldn’t tell them apart. Pulling the clip free, I set it to one side and opened the chamber, making certain the gun was unloaded. Satisfied, I hefted it to my shoulder, sighted down the length of the crawl space, and squeezed the trigger.

  Pow.

  The trigger closed with a soft click, closing on nothing.

  Now that felt right.

  Twenty-Eight

  I didn’t tell anyone about my trip to the barn. Didn’t feel like it was anybody’s business but mine. Martin came with Grant later that day and packed up the guns for their trip south. I came along, too, just watching the whole thing transpire.

  Grant stalked out into the snow and looked over the remains of our home, hands on his hips. He shook his head, an odd grin playing at the corners of his mouth. “Must’ve been some fire,” was all he said. He and Martin packed everything up and hit the road with no fanfare at all. Martin said he’d call when they got to D.C., but I told him not to bother. It was a good seven-hour drive at least, minus traffic, and I had no intention of waiting up for them. I drove his truck back to Jerry’s.

  Christmas came and went without me having a say in the matter one way or another. I felt like I was put on hold, waiting out the holiday while other people celebrated. The Knapps made a deal about having me there. They even bought me a sweater. It was a little small, but I didn’t complain. I watched them open their gifts and ooh and aah over their mutual thoughtfulness and familial love, and I tried not to hate them for it. It wasn’t their fault my family was broken. They were doing me a kindness, having me over. It’s not like I had anyplace else to go.

  But I think that day I’d have preferred a motel room with some Chinese takeout and cable T.V.

  I smiled and lied my way through the whole experience. I felt dead inside. Mary cornered me in the kitchen that evening and asked if I was feeling all right. I shrugged. She instantly assumed it was because of the house, and while I can’t say she was wrong, I’m just as sure she didn’t get half of what I was going through.

  Frankly, I didn’t either.

  Something must’ve snapped in me, and maybe that’s what Martin wanted to engineer with his ‘burn the ships’ philosophy. Without the house there was nothing keeping me in New York anymore. I didn’t owe Martin a damn thing now. I didn’t have to hold down the fort so he’d have some place to come home to. I didn’t have to worry about trying to plant Mom’s garden or paint the back porch or preserve the past in any shape, manner or form.

  I was free.

  I could go anywhere and do anything I wanted to do.

  Only problem was I had no idea what that should be.

  So I stayed put.

  Week after Christmas, Grant and Martin returned. We made for the Knapps’ gun shop and had our debriefing in the back. Jerry joined us after locking the front door and flipping the closed sign out.

  The back office of the gun shop was little more than a stale workroom lit by a pair of fluorescent tubes affixed to the ceiling. Steel shelves filled with tagged guns, spare parts and an assortment of tools lined unpainted sheetrock walls. A makeshift counter top ran along the far wall, and a gray desk with an archaic computer and printer atop it stood to the left of the door. A pair of black vinyl lounge chairs sat on either side of a tall table featuring a stained Mr. Coffee maker and a tiny microwave oven. An unobtrusive teacup with pink Sweet-n-lows and brown stirring sticks occupied the top of the microwave. The liquid in the coffee maker looked thick and old. I turned the machine off.

  Jerry set up a card table in the center of the room, and we crowded around it. Grant unfolded a map of D.C., laying it down before us. I noticed several streets were marked off in red, while three spots had dark circles drawn around them.

  “Listen up, Cherries. This here is the lay of the land. These streets marked in red? They’re restricted access. No parking but by permit only, and forget about getting across the Potomac. The three best locations to set up a shot are here,” he tapped the Jefferson Memorial. “Here.” The Old Post Office. “And here.” A tap on the Newseum, a museum dedicated to the news media. Only in Washington.

  “What about here?” I tapped the Lincoln Memorial. “It’s a direct shot to the Capitol Steps.”

  “Couple of reasons, Cherry, thanks for asking. One, it’s guarded. Heavily. The Park police will set themselves up with a nice little perch right on top of the building. That way they can keep an eye on the crowds. Second, this whole area here is packed to the gills with jumbotrons. You won’t be able to shoot over them or around them.”

  Martin cleared his throat. “Jefferson’s Memorial has a couple of advantages. It’s away from the primary security checkpoints, and it’s got a direct line of sight to the Capitol steps. Roads ought to be clear of vehicle traffic, so even though it ain’t high ground, you should still be able to get a clear shot.”

  “Not to mention the great symbolism,” I offered.

  Martin shook his head. “It’s also got one glaring disadvantage.”

  “It’s completely exposed,” said Jerry.

  “Exactly. Anyone lining up a shot from the top of the Memorial has got scant seconds to set up before someone takes notice. If the Park police have got any sharpshooters looking that way, they’ll take you out before you can take the shot.”

  Grant continued, “That leaves us with the Old Post Office and the Newseum. Advantages include clear shots to the Capitol and plenty of places to hide the guns until we need them. Disadvantages are the same as everywhere else. Heavy security. Pennsylvania Ave is the parade route the Prez is supposed to take after the inauguration. Movements are restricted to those who have tickets.”
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  “So we get ourselves some tickets,” I suggested.

  He grinned. “No need. There’s one other group of people that don’t need tickets.” Here he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a couple of security badges. “Employees. Gentlemen, welcome to your new jobs. You work security, now. Don’t forget to fill out your W-2’s.”

  “You got us jobs?” Jerry said. We picked up the badges, startled to see our faces on the identifications.

  “How’d you do this?”

  He smirked. “Just one of the many reasons our country’s going to hell. Too much info is available on line for someone possessing the right skills. You remember Rick? Bet you’ll never guess what his day job is.”

  “He’s into computers?” I ventured.

  “In a heap big, brainiac sort of way. Pulled your driver’s license photos from the DMV database and got you listed as employees in the respective buildings. Seeing as you’re both newbies and low men on the totem pole, you pulled duty during the Inauguration, when everyone else has it off.”

  “Convenient.”

  “Chuck Thomson?” said Jerry.

  “Extra protection,” Grant explained. “You’re listed under aliases.”

  I looked at mine. “Joe Warren? Why’ve I heard that name?”

  Grant shook his head, pulled out his wallet and handed Martin a five-dollar bill. “Shoot, Cherry. Thought you were smarter than that.”

  “Told you. Even Peter’s got his limits.”

  I muttered the names to myself, unable to shake their familiarity. Finally I gave up and shrugged. “I give.”

  “Patriots,” said Grant. “Sons of Liberty. ‘Course, we couldn’t pick some of the more famous ones. Martin here is Tom Young, and I’m Jim Otis. We need to practice calling each other by these names for a little while. Oh yeah, and one more thing.”

  We looked up, uncertain.

  He smiled reassuringly. “You start Monday.”

  Twenty-Nine

  “Monday?” said Jerry, sinking onto the desk.

  “Is that a problem?”

  His jaw dropped. “Yeah. It might be. Little notice would be nice, don’tcha think?”

  Martin grimaced. “Why’s that? What’ve you got going on?”

  “Don’t know if you guys noticed this or not, but we’ve been real busy lately. I mean, everyone’s afraid of what the new Prez will do ‘cause he’s so anti-gun, and stock’s just been flying off the shelves.”